Existence and Uniqueness
by xenu1275
Summary: Neji's mistake endangers all of Konoha. Now he and his comrades must try to make it right before it's too late. Sequel to "Form of Freedom." Final two chapters are now posted. Please review!
1. Shopping

**Author's Note: This is a sequel to "Form of Freedom." It should be understandable without reading that story first, but I do recommend that you read "Form of Freedom" before "Existence and Uniqueness," just to get a better appreciation of the background and abilities of the OC mentioned here.**

_Shopping_

Lord Hiashi Hyuuga had no time for frivolity. As a man he was strong, handsome, cold. As a father he was stern and demanding, and though Hinata knew him to be capable of deep feeling she also knew that nothing, not even his own daughters, was so important to him as the Hyuuga clan and its _kekkei genkai_. Hiashi possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the shinobi world and understood the politics of the Fire Country as least as well as the Hokage, but unlike the Hokage he classified everything he knew according to how it pertained to his clan. Outside of that narrow focus he had no real interests.

Which was why Hinata could scarcely understand what he was saying to her now.

"I . . . was just about to begin my morning training, Father," she said confusedly, looking up at him from the central courtyard of their mansion. He stood outside his workroom, ramrod-straight with folded arms. When he'd first come out, Hinata had thought for one thrilling instant that he intended to oversee her training; usually the best she could hope for was a few comments called carelessly through the door. But it seemed Hiashi's true intent was altogether stranger.

"That can wait, Hinata. In five minutes we will depart for the festival. Meet me at the front door." Then he turned and strode briskly away, his footsteps as precisely timed as a metronome.

_Training can wait?_ She'd never thought to hear those words from her father, whose affection for his daughters extended exactly as far as the range of their Byakugan. And Hinata couldn't remember the last time her father had attended Konoha's annual Art Festival; somehow she couldn't picture him strolling casually through the crowd, eating a candied apple and buying trinkets.

Yet it seemed that this year he meant to go, and he wanted her to accompany him. Hinata had already made plans to meet up at the Festival with Shino and Kiba later. With her teammates she felt as comfortable as she ever did, able to (mostly) forget her confidence issues and simply be herself. The same was certainly not true of her father. But one did not say no to Lord Hiashi, and his invitation to the Festival had not been phrased as a request.

In five minutes exactly she met her father by the door, and was surprised to see that they were alone – Hanabi was nowhere to be seen.

"Um, won't Hanabi be joining us, Father?"

Hiashi shook his head and started down the street. "No," he replied, "your sister went earlier with some friends."

So he'd allowed Hanabi to go alone but insisted on Hinata's company? That was _very_ peculiar, as Hiashi openly preferred his younger and more powerful daughter. Hinata stayed silent, however, for just as one did not refuse Lord Hiashi, one did not question him, either.

In no time at all they had reached the Festival, sprawled through the streets surrounding Konoha's central administration building. Tiny tents and booths were set up everywhere, and a trickle of people moved among them, examining the food and wares on display. It was still early, and not yet crowded. Most of those booths not selling food were hung with various arts and crafts – jewelery, lacquerware, pottery. On this day each year Konoha's artisans, both amateur and professional, competed with one another for the attention of the public.

Hiashi moved briskly through it all, so that Hinata had to hurry to keep up. Her father didn't spare a single glance for the food, which wasn't surprising given that they had both eaten breakfast less than an hour before. But he didn't look at anything else, either. Why would he have come to the Art Festival if not to see art?

"_There_ it is," she heard him say quietly to himself, on catching sight of a knot of people gathered around the entrance to a tent that seemed somewhat larger than the rest. Just what was in the tent, though, she couldn't say – there were too many people in the way to see clearly.

Hiashi came to an abrupt halt, and as Hinata stopped beside him he muttered, "Byakugan!" She looked up at him in shock – using his _kekkei genkai_ here?

"Hinata," he said without looking at her, "engage your Byakugan and examine the tent."

"Um . . . yes," she answered uncertainly, raising her hands to make the necessary hand signs. A few passers-by looked at her uneasily when they saw that she was performing _ninjutsu_ – Konoha's civilian population did not exactly dislike their resident shinobi, but were understandably wary when they displayed their skills in public. Hinata felt bad for the discomfort they were provoking, but Hiashi didn't seem to notice.

"Byakugan!" she whispered, and immediately the gaudy sights of the Festival faded around her, to be replaced by a simpler world of shining blue.

The civilians clustered near the tent were reduced to neon line drawings of their chakra networks. The chakra in their bodies was dull, quiescent, unrefined. Looking past them, Hinata saw the outline of a squat chubby man standing near the entrance to the tent and a woman seated in its interior, laboring over some as-yet-indeterminate form of clay. The woman's chakra was many times brighter than that of the man or the crowd, and her network was subtly displaced from the usual position. In her right arm there seemed to be no network at all.

Instantly Hinata understood. This was the Yakuho tent, and the woman seated inside was Benihiko Chyoubi.

"Hinata," said Hiashi, "do you see the young woman inside the tent?"

"Yes."

"Do you know her?"

"Yes."

When Hinata failed to elaborate further Hiashi deactivated his Byakugan and looked at her sharply. "How do you know her, Hinata?"

Hinata also deactivated her Byakugan, but did not return her father's probing stare. Instead she looked at the ground. "I, um, had a mission involving her a while ago."

"Was this the mission six months ago, from which you returned injured?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

Hinata winced. Her father was a _jounin_; he knew better than that. "I c-can't tell you," she whispered. "The Hokage ordered us not to talk about it."

For an agonizing moment Hiashi did not speak, just kept staring at her. "I understand that," he said at last. "But I am a _jounin_, Hinata, and privy to certain things. I will tell you what I know or suspect, and you will confirm or deny it by nodding or shaking your head. That shouldn't violate the Hokage's orders, right?"

Hinata wasn't so sure, but her father's voice had taken on a tight, insistent tone. It would be dangerous to refuse him. A small part of her was also glad and proud to be able to help him in some way, to have something he deemed of value.

Hiashi didn't wait for her to agree. "Six months ago," he began, "you went on a mission with Neji, Sakura Haruno, Rock Lee, Tenten, and that woman in the tent, whose name is Benihiko Chyoubi."

Hinata nodded. That much, at least, was widely known.

"Your goal on that mission was to eradicate Benihiko Chyoubi's clan, who were guilty of attacking several merchant caravans outside the village."

Another nod.

"The Chyoubi clan possessed a _kekkei genkai_ which allowed them to sculpt their own blood into various weapons."

Nod. How did he know all this? The details of the Chyoubi clan's jutsu were one of the things the Hokage had been most concerned about concealing.

"The entire clan was wiped out, except for that woman in the tent."

Nod. Hinata had been unconscious at the time, but according to Sakura they had gone all at once, ripped apart painfully from within. Hinata was glad she hadn't seen it.

"Before they died, the Chyoubi were responsible for the deaths of several ANBU squads. They also came very close to killing you, Lee, Haruno, and Tenten."

Hinata nodded. She still had scars on her shoulder from the hole made there by a Chyoubi projectile. It had taken her weeks to fully recover, despite all of Lady Tsunade's skill.

"It was your team that took out the Chyoubi clan."

Hinata tensed, eyes still glued to the ground. The answer to this one was _no_, and she had a horrible suspicion that Hiashi knew it. But telling him that the team of Leaf shinobi dispatched by the Hokage had not been responsible for the death of Benihiko's clan would lead naturally to questions about who _was _responsible, and that was very dangerous ground indeed. Especially for her father.

"I-I can't—" Hinata began uncertainly, before her father cut her off.

"That's enough," he said. "If the answer had been 'yes,' you'd have just said so. Clearly the answer is 'no.'"

She flushed. Now, as always, he saw right through her, without any need for his Byakugan.

"That woman in the tent," continued Hiashi mercilessly, "possesses the _kekkei genkai _of her clan."

That one she _really_ shouldn't answer, but pierced by her father's unblinking gaze, she had no choice. She nodded.

Hiashi let out a breath and narrowed his eyes fractionally. "She possesses it rather strongly," he said.

Nod. Just a few more questions, and he would know everything.

But that seemed to be all he had. Hiashi nodded a few times in satisfaction, then looked back at the crowded tent. "Just as I thought," he said. "I can see from here that she is powerful. But what happened to her right arm?"

Hinata stayed resolutely silent. She would not say any more. Seeing this, her father gave an odd small smile and said, "Well, if you won't tell me, I'll just have to find out for myself. Shall we go in?" He started pushing his way toward the tent.

Hinata watched him for a moment and felt a queasy desire to flee. Somehow her father had found out about Benihiko and planned this whole outing in order to learn more. Hinata was only here because her relationship with the sculptor could give Hiashi an 'in.'

She was being used to get at Benihiko. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She followed her father into the crowd.

By the time she caught him he had reached the tent's entrance, a rectangular opening which framed a balding old man with muscular forearms and delicate artist's hands. "Master Yakuho," said Hiashi respectfully, bowing to the little man.

"Hyuuga-sama," replied Yakuho, bowing back. "It has been some time since you last bought from me. Don't tell me you broke one of my creations and need a replacement?"

Hiashi didn't care one whit about art, but he _did _care about status, and so he had seen to it that his mansion was tastefully decorated with multiple works by Yakuho, Konoha's most revered – and expensive – sculptor. What he'd spent on Yakuho's sculptures could have fed all of Konoha for a year.

"No, of course not, Master Yakuho," replied Hiashi warmly with a small smile. He could be quite charming when necessary. "But I have heard rumors about your new apprentice. Supposedly she is the reason you are participating in the Festival this year?"

"Ah, yes!" Yakuho exclaimed, and his face broke open into a huge smile that displayed his yellowing teeth. "Benihiko! The best thing that ever happened to me! I admit I'd given up finding an heir in this no-talent town, but I was wrong! Almost all the works here today are hers – I'm grooming her to take over the studio in a year or two." Yakuho paused and looked speculatively at Hiashi. A big sale today would boost his disciple's reputation. "Would you like to come in and take a look?" he asked slyly. "Your daughter too, of course." He waved carelessly in Hinata's direction. They'd actually met before, but she doubted he remembered.

"Yes, thank you," replied Hiashi, before ducking gracefully into the tent. Hinata followed.

Within it was cool and shadowy, and smelled of damp earth. Wooden shelves and tables lined the sides of the tent, and were filled with pottery and sculptures – tea bowls, flowers, small animals, and a few sharp-edged clay weapons. All of them displayed Benihiko's characteristically delicate workmanship. Hinata felt sure that, if she held them up to the sunlight streaming down outside the tent, they would prove to be translucent.

"Exquisite," murmured Hiashi as he cast a cursory glance at the wares on display. But then his attention focused sharply at the rear of the tent, where Benihiko was seated behind a long table.

She'd looked up as they came in, and immediately ceased working on the half-finished piece in front of her. Hinata saw her hastily shaking her right sleeve over her hand, then tucking the hand out of sight under the table. She wore the same shapeless brown shift as always, and her brown hair was piled in a messy knot on top of her head. Her eyes, green and sharp, flicked from Yakuho to Hiashi to Hinata.

"Hinata," she said in surprise, and smiled. "It's been a while."

Indeed it had. Hinata had been in the hospital for some time after her injury, and after that had been told that Benihiko was in seclusion, working tirelessly away in Master Yakuho's studio and not seeing visitors. Hinata had supposed it was grief and given the sculptor her space.

"Hello, Beni," she said quietly. "How are you?"

Benihiko's eyes flickered and her smile slipped briefly, but then she waved her left hand around and said with forced cheerfulness, "Busy, as you can see. I've been sculpting day and night to get ready for this Festival. How about you?"

Before Hinata could answer Hiashi laid a hand on her arm and said, "Aren't you going to introduce me, Hinata?"

"Um, yes . . ." said Hinata, squirming a bit in her father's grip. "Father, this is Benihiko Chyoubi. Benihiko, this is my father, Hiashi Hyuuga."

Benihiko rose and bowed respectfully, still keeping her right hand hidden inside her sleeve. "Pleased to meet you, Hyuuga-sama."

Hiashi bowed just as deeply and said, "And I am pleased to meet you, Chyoubi-sama."

Benihiko started in surprise at being addressed this way. Hinata supposed it made a twisted sort of sense, though – Benihiko _was_ technically the leader of her clan, since everyone else was dead.

"Master Yakuho has told me of your skill," continued Hiashi, "and now I can see what he means. You are truly a worthy successor to him."

Straightened up now, Benihiko regarded him carefully, clearly not sure what to think. "I wouldn't go that far," she said at last. "And it's Yakuho."

"I'm sorry?" asked Hiashi politely.

"My name. It's Yakuho. The Master adopted me last month, so that I can officially inherit his practice."

"I see," said Hiashi, raising an eyebrow. "Congratulations." He did not sound congratulatory, however – throwing away one's clan name clearly didn't sit right with him, though he was unwilling to say so.

Hiashi's disapproval was not lost on Benihiko. Her mouth twisted into a wry smile as she asked, "Do you like sculpture, Hyuuga-sama?"

Hiashi nodded. "I do. But I already own a number of Master Yakuho's works. I'm more interested in your own unique style. For example, can you tell me about that piece you're working on right now?"

Hinata's attention shifted to the table in front of Benihiko, which she had not properly noticed during the sculptor's tense exchange with her father. She felt a vertiginous jolt of recognition – the unfinished sculpture was of an arm, crooked at an angle that somehow looked painful, erupting in sharp-edged shapes like spines.

According to Sakura, this was the exact way Benihiko's entire family had died.

"It's an arm," said Benihiko flatly, clearly thrown off by Hiashi's prescient change in topic.

"And the shapes emerging from it?" asked Hiashi smoothly, overlooking her rudeness. "They look like _kunai_."

"They are."

"What an odd choice," observed Hiashi, his white eyes fixed on the sculptor's green ones. "What does it mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything," Benihiko retorted. "It's just art. I meant it to be disturbing."

"Yes, yes," Master Yakuho interjected loudly, "some of that modern stuff. I told you, girl, that the public won't buy it, no matter how good it is. They're all too stupid, they want cute little bunnies and the like." He laughed and clapped his hands together. "Though that piece there is brilliant. Don't know where you get these ideas . . ."

So he didn't know. Hinata really couldn't blame Benihiko for keeping her past to herself. She'd changed her name, started a new life as an artist – obviously she wanted to leave her old life behind. But judging by the piece she was sculpting now, she was having some trouble on that front.

"Surely, Master Yakuho, you didn't mean that _I _am too stupid to appreciate fine art?" asked Hiashi smoothly, turning to look at the little man. "After all the lovely pieces I've bought from you over the years?"

Yakuho colored. Hinata would have bet that he _did_ in fact think that Hiashi, and every single other resident of Konoha besides himself and Benihiko, was an uncouth moron. Still, it was bad form to say so in front of a long-time customer.

"Of course not, Hyuuga-sama. I was only referring to the common rabble."

"I see," said Hiashi. "I was about to say that, far from preferring 'little bunnies,' I think the piece your apprentice is working on now is remarkable. I would like to purchase it when it is complete."

Master Yakuho looked taken aback. "Really? It won't exactly fit with your current décor."

Hiashi smiled again. "Well, if that's the case, I'm sure you'll be able to recommend several other pieces that might complement it nicely, and show me how best to arrange them. In fact, since she's the artist, why don't you send your apprentice over with the finished piece when it's done, and allow her to decide how it should be displayed?"

It was very well done. Hiashi's money gave him influence over Master Yakuho, and in offering to buy Benihiko's most idiosyncratic piece and asking for her assistance in displaying it, Hiashi was giving the old man a chance to gain profit for himself and prestige for his disciple. Master Yakuho could hardly refuse.

Not that he wanted to. "All right then!" the old man exclaimed excitedly. "Benihiko works fast – she should have that piece done within two weeks, at the most. I'll contact you to make the arrangements when the time comes. You won't regret it, Hyuuga-sama –Benihiko will soon be the most famous artist in the Fire Country, and you'll be able to say you bought one of her first big works!"

"I look forward to it," said Hiashi. "I'll take my leave then, and wait for your message." He bowed to Master Yakuho and Benihiko in turn, then exited the tent. Hinata followed, casting a desperate look back at Benihiko before she went. In her friend's eyes she saw the same realization now sinking heavily into the pit of her own stomach – that Benihiko had just become ensnared in some plot of Hiashi's, and that the only way out was through.


	2. Abandonment

_Abandonment_

Neji hated getting orders from the Main House. He was a _jounin_, qualified to captain a team or train _genin_, and yet still he was powerless to refuse any directive issued by Lord Hiashi. Weeks would go by during which he would not think once about his curse mark, and then one day a tightly wrapped scroll impressed with Hiashi's seal would be waiting for him in his quarters at the Branch House. Hiashi did not abuse his power, only asked for Neji infrequently for undemanding bodyguard and escort tasks, yet the knowledge that he _could_ require far more without the possibility of refusal still rankled.

The orders awaiting Neji when he returned from breakfast that morning were more of the same: he was to meet an important guest of his uncle's in the village and escort this person as far as the Main House. Neji bit back his annoyance – surely, if this person was a resident of Konoha, they could find their way alone, or else be accompanied by Hinata or Hanabi. But Hiashi placed great emphasis on appearances, and it wouldn't do to have one of his own daughters acting as a lowly escort. Moreover Neji was aware that he projected a certain air of confidence and power which in turn made Hiashi's guests feel well-cared for, as if they were getting the very best their host had to offer. Hence his plans to spend the day training would have to wait while he posed as a status symbol for Lord Hyuuga.

Neji scanned the scroll again to find the name and address of the person he was supposed to escort – the first time through he'd only read enough of it to get the gist of the orders. His eyes widened slightly when he finally found what he was looking for: Benihiko Yakuho, at Master Yakuho's studio.

Benihiko _Yakuho_? Surely it had to be the same Benihiko with whom he'd gone on a mission six months before; Benihiko just wasn't that common a name, and who else would be residing at Master Yakuho's studio? Evidently she'd changed her name, been adopted by her teacher. He found that he was happy for her, that she'd managed to shed the last link to her vicious and ill-fated clan.

This time, it hadn't even cost her a limb.

If he wanted to be there on time he'd have to leave now, as the orders specified a pick-up time of only half an hour hence and Master Yakuho's studio was quite a distance away. Neji cast the scroll down and strode quickly from the room, realizing as he went that this time he didn't mind his assignment so much.

Yakuho's studio was exactly as he remembered it – an old-fashioned building fronted by a low sliding wooden door. Neji had just reached out toward the door when it was flung roughly open from within, revealing the plump form of the master potter himself.

"You're on time!" he cried, sounding none too pleased. "Dammit!" Then he whirled around and sped off into the darkened interior of the shop, calling "Benihiko! He's here! Get out here!" as he went.

Bemused, Neji remained in the doorway, not sure whether he was expected to enter or not. Presently Yakuho came into view again, this time walking beside a short brown-haired woman who was carrying a bulky wrapped package and bending down to listen to the old man's whispered discourse.

"—and if he goes any lower than that, just _walk out_," Yakuho was saying vehemently. "Anything less is an insult – never forget, you are a Yakuho now! You command premium prices!"

"Yes master," said Benihiko calmly, casting an amused look in Neji's direction as she reached the doorway. "Don't worry about anything. I'll be back soon." She stepped backwards out of the shop and then slid the door shut, letting out a sigh of relief when it finally obscured the last sliver of her master's face. "So it's you," she said, straightening up to look at Neji.

"Yes," he said simply. "Should I take that for you?" Assistance with burdens was part of an escort's duty, and this package looked particularly awkward.

"No," said Benihiko, "I think not. This is one of my pieces, you see, and I don't trust anyone else to handle it."

They started off down the street, moving rather slowly. "So you are delivering a sculpture to Lord Hyuuga?" asked Neji.

She nodded. "Deliveries are not normally part of our service, but Lord Hyuuga insisted and since we expect to get such a good price—" She cut off abruptly and flushed a bit, no doubt thinking that it was unwise to reveal her plans for fleecing Hiashi to his representative. "Er, I mean since he's such a good customer, we decided to oblige him." She looked over at Neji nervously.

He merely nodded and said blandly, "I see." Hiashi's finances were none of his concern. "And you actually made this one?"

"Yes," she replied. "This will be my first big sale."

"I see," he said again. "Then you are . . . settled in with Master Yakuho?"

She halted for a moment to catch her breath, fixing him with one of her sharp-eyed looks as she did so. He was not just asking about her artistic career and she knew it.

Slowly she nodded. "Yes," she answered. "Yes, I think I'm all settled in now, thank you."

Neji began walking again and felt her fall into step beside him. "That's good," he replied. "I gather you have taken the name Yakuho?"

"Oh yes. Haven't you heard? Master Yakuho and I are married now."

He nearly walked into a tree. He checked himself barely in time and turned to see her laughing at him, her ponytail swaying rhythmically back and forth and the burlap wrapping over the sculpture shifting slightly.

"No no," she gasped finally, breathless with mirth, "I'm not serious! He adopted me."

"That," said Neji with dignity, "is what I thought." He turned his back on her and resumed marching resolutely up the street.

"You're not actually offended, are you?" she asked uncertainly when she caught up to him. "You never have any expression, so I can't tell."

"No," said Neji stiffly. "I am not offended." In truth he hated to be laughed at, but he was actually glad to see she _could_ laugh. He hadn't seen her since the day her clan died, and had found himself periodically wondering about what she was doing, how she was adjusting. He still remembered the haunted look in her eyes as she beheld the pile of weaponry that was all that remained of her siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins.

"I was honored when Master Yakuho offered to adopt me," said Benihiko after a moment. "I never knew my father, so I feel that Master Yakuho is a sort of replacement."

He nodded. Her affection for the old man, and his for her, was obvious.

"He's a bit eccentric, though," she continued. Neji thought privately that that was an understatement. The man had once threatened to kill him. "He hates ninja, for one thing, which is why I don't understand why he lives in Konoha. He says it's just habit now, that he's too old to move, but I think he actually loves this place and doesn't want to leave. He would never say that, though. He's always complaining about how ignorant the people here are. At the Festival we barely sold a thing, because the customers could hear him muttering things like, 'Idiots, morons, cretins!' under his breath."

"Hn," said Neji noncommittally. He was listening to her, taking in every word, but didn't have anything to contribute. He didn't remember her being this talkative before. Maybe this was a sign of happiness? Or maybe she was uncomfortable with him, and trying to fill the silence.

Except that now she wasn't saying anything, just looking at him expectantly. "What?" he asked, realizing he was _not_ taking in every word, after all.

"I asked," she said in annoyance, "whether you could tell me anything about why Lord Hyuuga was so insistent that I deliver this piece personally."

"Oh." Neji's brow furrowed slightly as he thought it over. It _was_ an odd request. Hiashi must surely have had an ulterior motive, something that involved seeing Benihiko in person.

"It is possible," said Neji carefully, "that Lord Hyuuga is curious about you. He may have learned the details of our mission somehow." If that was the case he could certainly understand his uncle's interest, for having seen the blood-sculpting art in action, he knew that it could certainly pose a threat to the Byakugan's preeminence.

"Then," said Benihiko seriously, fixing him with a searching gaze, "should I be worried about this man?"

Neji couldn't answer that. He was bound, forcibly, by his duty to the Main House. He was not free to speak against it. He remained silent, face averted, for a charged minute and then halted in front of a huge, old-fashioned mansion bearing the Hyuuga name. "We're here," he said simply. He met her eyes and saw that she was anxious. In this setting, though, he could not help her. He just gestured for her to step inside ahead of him.

Hanabi, his much younger cousin, met them at the door. Her dark hair hung in curtains around a thin, pale face whose most notable feature was a pair of large, seemingly pupil-less opalescent eyes. "Hello," she said, staring at Benihiko as the woman stepped out of her shoes. Neji could tell that Hanabi had her Byakugan engaged and was taking this opportunity to gawk unabashedly at Benihiko's right arm.

"Hanabi," he said sharply, and her head snapped around to look at him, "don't you think you should go tell Lord Hyuuga that we're here?"

"He already knows," she said casually. "He was watching you come up the street."

Not out the window, no doubt. They might as well have built this house out of glass.

"This way," said Hanabi, beckoning at Benihiko. "Everyone's waiting for you. And _you_," she added, turning to Neji, "are supposed to stay here and wait to take her home again."

"I see," he said, irritated, and followed them down a long hallway of polished hardwood. Benihiko cast an apologetic look over her shoulder.

The reached the main chamber and Neji came to a halt outside, as did Hanabi and Benihiko. "I can't go in," said Hanabi bitterly. "Father says I'm too _young_."

Benihiko looked quickly at Neji, who just shook his head. "Hinata-sama is probably in there," he said quietly.

Benihiko faced the door, squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, then opened the door and entered the room. She did not look back.

Neji could only imagine what she must be thinking, in this huge old house inhabited by white-eyed freaks who could see through walls.

***

Whatever Hiashi wanted with Benihiko took a while, and Neji found himself in the company of Hanabi, who as usual insisted that he fight her.

"Gentle Fist!" the little girl cried, aiming a blow at his torso. To humor her Neji had his Byakugan engaged, and he could see that she was putting quite a lot of power behind her strikes. She was fresh from the Academy, a newly minted _genin_, and for her to have that sort of chakra control was impressive.

It wasn't enough, though. Neji reached quickly over Hanabi's head and grabbed the back of her shirt, halting her just out of reach of his body.

"That's not fair!" she hissed at him. "Your arms are so much longer!"

" 'Fair?' " he echoed coldly. "Is that what you're going to say to your enemies in battle?"

She dropped her hands and scowled up at him. He released the back of her shirt and she stood up straight and folded her arms. There was a calculating look on her face that he didn't care for.

"Are we done, then?" he asked her calmly.

"Hn," she replied, and stomped over to sit on the walkway that wrapped around the mansion's central courtyard. More sedately he moved to join her.

"Do you know," began Hanabi slyly, scuffing her feet in the dirt, "what they're talking about in there?"

"I have no idea."

"Well I know!" She grinned wickedly in his direction.

Neji couldn't _ever _remember being this obnoxious. Whatever, he was not going to beg a child for information.

"Don't you want to know?" urged Hanabi when he didn't speak.

Neji shrugged equivocally.

"It's marriage!" the little girl burst out, staring avidly at him to gauge his reaction.

She was not disappointed. Her cousin, normally so cool and impassive, looked at her with widened eyes, his mouth pressed into a thin, straight line. For him, it was practically a scream of shock. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

"I mean," she said slowly, drawing it out, "that Father wants to marry that sculptor woman!"

Neji's brows knit. It was the most expression Hanabi had ever seen out if him in one day. "Why would he do that?" he asked. "She's young enough to be his daughter. She's not even a shinobi. She's an _artist_."

"It's her _kekkei genkai_," said Hanabi gleefully. "Father wants it. He says it would be really strong with the Byakugan."

Unbidden, an image came to Neji's mind: red sculpted _senbon_ flashing through the air to strike precisely at a black-clad ninja's _tenketsu_, disabling him from a distance. Really strong indeed. It would mean extending the Hyuuga family's potent jutsu out to mid-range, something Hiashi had been trying to accomplish for years with little success. And it would belong entirely to the Main House.

The sound of doors sliding open and voices echoing off wooden floors came from within the mansion, breaking Neji out of his thoughts. He got to his feet and hurried off toward the main chamber, tailed closely by Hanabi.

Benihiko was emerging from the room, now sans her lumpy package. She looked distracted, thoughtful, staring blankly into space. Hiashi and Hinata came out behind her, him staring intently at Benihiko and her peering down the hall at Neji.

"Neji-nii san," Hinata greeted him, smiling.

"Hinata-sama," he replied flatly, turning toward her with a look that made her drop her gentle smile and shrink back against the wall. He hadn't looked at her like that since the first time they both took the _chuunin_ exams, years ago.

He'd tried to kill her then.

"I intend to place more orders with Master Yakuho in the future," Lord Hiashi said to Benihiko. "So I expect you will be calling on us again. We will talk more then." His voice and body language were both forceful, leaving no doubt that what he said would come to pass.

Benihiko looked at back at him. "As you like," she replied tonelessly. "Thank you, Hyuuga-sama. I really must return to the studio now."

Hiashi nodded and saw her to the door. "Neji will escort you home," he said. "Be safe." Then he bowed deeply to her.

Benihiko stepped into her shoes and returned the courtesy, simultaneously backing out of the doorway. Neji followed, and just before he exited he saw Hinata open her mouth as if to say something. He didn't wait to hear what it was, though, just turned his back on her and her father and stepped into the street to join Benihiko. The door closed and they were alone.

"Let's go," said Neji roughly, and began stalking away from the Main House.

Benihiko hurried to keep up with him. "Slow down!" she said. "I just knelt in the formal position for over an hour, and I can't feel my feet. _Slow down!_"

He stopped and folded his arms, staring straight ahead. "Fine. Let me know when you're ready."

She stopped too, panting slightly. "Is there a problem?'

He did not look at her; his eyes remained fixed elsewhere. "No," he said flatly.

She seemed torn between confusion and annoyance. Annoyance won. Her green eyes narrowed and hardened and she said, "You know, I don't really need an escort. I'm perfectly capable of finding my own way."

"I'm sure," he replied icily. "But orders are orders. Are you ready to go now?"

She seemed on the verge of saying something else but then decided against it and shook her head forcefully as though trying to clear it. "Yes, I'm ready." She marched up the street ahead of him, not looking to see if he was following her.

They continued this way for ten minutes or so, Neji walking about a meter and a half behind Benhiko, until they were in a quiet residential neighborhood he felt sure was out of sight of the Main House. "So," he called to her, "how long will it be?"

She halted and shot him a look. "How long will _what_ be?"

He stopped too. "How long will it be before I have to address you as Lady Hyuuga?"

She was dumbfounded. "You know about that?"

"Hanabi told me. Apparently Lord Hyuuga is very keen to combine your _kekkei genkai_ with the Byakugan."

She frowned. "It's not as if he proposed or anything, he just mentioned the _possibility_, and I said—"

"You know," Neji cut in, "this makes everything much clearer."

Her frown deepened. "It does?"

"Yes. You said you cut off your arm to free yourself from your clan, and it always seemed extraordinary to me that someone should be willing to endure so much pain for a nebulous goal like 'freedom.' But _now _I see you were after something far more concrete." He paused, and though his face was still his eyes burned with malice. "Power."

Benihiko had gone quite pale, and her sculpted right hand –the same one she'd put through her own mother's chest—was balled into a fist. Her voice was brittle when she said carefully, "I do not seek power over you or any other Hyuuga."

"Oh, not at first," he agreed. "At first you wanted power over your own clan, didn't you? You got us to help you kill your mother so _you_ could assume control. But it backfired. You were left without any clan at all. No wonder you were so affected by their deaths – your disappointment almost seemed like grief."

Her right hand was methodically opening and then closing, as though eager for action. She was breathing heavily, fighting for control. "My grief," she hissed, "was and _is_ genuine."

"Well then," he answered, his voice reaching arctic levels of cold, "no doubt joining the Hyuuga clan will soothe it. You'll have a whole new family, and this time you won't be the one wearing the curse mark, you'll be the one _using_ it. Your mother would be proud."

She came at him then, with an inchoate howl of rage. Her usual strategy was to hang back from her opponent and send in projectiles sculpted from her own blood, but this time she seemed bent on fighting him hand-to-hand. As she ran at him she pulled her right arm back and cocked her fist.

He was ready. She was no match for him hand-to-hand, but he didn't intend to let it go that far. "_Hakke kusho!_" he cried, sending a focused blast of pure chakra in her direction.

He hit her square in the chest and she flew backwards, landing with a thud on the hard-packed earth. But her kind were durable and she was back on her feet in seconds, looking murderous.

"I could _kill_ you!" she spat.

"I don't think so," he replied. "You're six months out of practice, and I've seen every detail of your jutsu."

For a moment it seemed like she would force the issue, and if it came to that Neji wasn't really sure he could defeat her, in spite of his words. She was very powerful, and he knew from painful experience that her projectiles could neutralize his _kaiten._ In his current mood, though, he would be more than willing to give it a try.

But then she drew herself up to her fullest height and lifted her chin. Her whole body shook with rage and her voice also trembled with barely-suppressed emotion as she said, "I … don't want to fight you. Just … get … _away_ from me."

"Gladly," he said, and turned on his heel to walk back the way they had come. He could feel her eyes on him as he went, her anger burning into the back of his skull.

Benihiko waited until he had passed out of sight and her outrage had subsided a bit before setting off once more. Abandoned by her escort, she made her way home alone.

Which was why when she reached the studio and found what awaited her there, there was no one to call for help.


	3. Regret and Atonement

_Regret and Atonement_

Konoha was supposed to be impregnable. High walls, fortified with living guards and hidden jutsus emplaced by the Hokage herself, separated it from the forest. The only way in was through one of the four great gates, positioned at each of the four cardinal directions and manned by sharp-eyed ninja. To enter one had to first submit to an inspection by these guards, to state one's purpose and display a valid pass. Failing the inspection was lethal; the guards had orders to detain would-be infiltrators and turn them over to ANBU for questioning. In the unlikely event someone did penetrate the city's outer defenses they would then have to contend with its fanatically loyal inhabitants, roughly half of whom were shinobi. In short entering the village surreptitiously was a suicidal prospect, a fact that brought a deep feeling of security to Konoha's civilians.

But the village's recent history had demonstrated in dramatic fashion that even its formidable defenses could be breached, and now it seemed they had failed again. As Sakura surveyed the scene of devastation before her, she felt keenly how provisional the existence of the Leaf was, how dependent on constant vigilance and perpetual reinforcement. Security was a civilian illusion that shinobi could ill afford.

Yakuho's studio seemed to have been destroyed from within. The sliding wooden door had been blown outward into splinters that littered the street, exposing the ruined interior to the slanting gold rays of the afternoon sunlight. Inside, the fresh _tatami_ was dyed red with blood, as were the wood-and-rice paper moveable walls and even the ceiling. There were gaping holes punched in the floor, ceiling, and walls, letting light and air enter from outside and pass unobstructed from room to room through the old building. The many shelves and cabinets, which had once displayed costly works of art, lay in pieces on the floor, among shards and dust that were all that remained of Yakuho's pottery. In the center of it all lay Master Yakuho himself, face down and stiff.

"How long has he been dead?" asked the masked ANBU on Sakura's right, gesturing at the corpse.

Sakura crouched down to get a better look. "He's still in _rigor mortis_," she replied, "so no more than a day. I'd guess he died approximately this time yesterday." She paused. "And it didn't happen quickly. He bled to death."

The ANBU grunted noncommittally. That Yakuho had died hard was obvious even to him. The old man's body was covered in slashes, punctures, and bruises. None of those injuries were fatal, though – that distinction belonged to the two clean cuts at the end of Yakuho's arms, that had severed both of his hands at the wrist. The hands lay together a few feet away in a pool of sunlight and blood, oddly delicate, looking like another of the ruined and scattered art pieces.

"I've seen torture before," said Sakura softly, looking at the old man's ravaged body. "But to do this to a civilian, to cut off his _hands_ …" She trailed off, unable to find words harsh enough. How horrified Yakuho must have been, to see his livelihood hacked away from his body and tossed aside like garbage. She could not imagine a worse death for a sculptor.

"Is there any sign of Benihiko?" she asked, looking up at the ANBU, half fearing the answer.

"There is," came a voice from behind her, and Kakashi stepped into the room, accompanied by his ninja hound Pakkun. As usual his face was almost completely obscured by his tight black mask and forehead protector, but Sakura had grown adept at reading his expression from the one visible eye and thought he looked troubled.

"Her … her body isn't somewhere around here, is it?"

It was Pakkun who answered. "No," said the little dog. "Yakuho's is the only corpse. But Tsunade-sama gave me some of Benihiko's blood to smell, and most of what's on the walls and ceiling here definitely belongs to her. What's on the floor is mainly Yakuho's."

Sakura closed her eyes briefly. "So Benihiko fought with her attackers."

Kakashi nodded. "Given what I've been told about her jutsu, that seems to be the best explanation."

"But she was so powerful! No ordinary ninja could have taken her against her will. And why didn't anybody hear the fight?"

"We have some ideas on that as well." Kakashi thrust his hands into his pockets and gazed outside through a nearby hole in the wall. "I've talked to the residents of the houses in this immediate vicinity. They all report hearing and seeing nothing out of the ordinary until this morning, when they finally noticed the condition of the studio. But all the evidence indicates Benihiko and Master Yakuho were attacked yesterday, so something must account for the delay." He fell silent and looked back at Sakura expectantly.

Her eyes widened. "_Genjutsu_!"

"Indeed," he replied. "Somebody cast a powerful illusion over everyone in this area, preventing them from realizing anything was wrong until today. To produce such a perfect illusion and deceive so many at once, it must have been an extraordinary ninja, and that person must have stayed _here _until this morning, to buy the rest of the attackers time to escape."

"They were here today?" Sakura stiffened and looked about the studio in alarm. "Are you sure they're gone?"

"We're sure. There'd be no reason for them to stay after dispelling the _genjutsu_, and their scent has begun to dissipate."

"But then, who did this? And _why_?"

Kakashi looked very serious. "As to why," he answered, "can you think of no reason?"

Sakura looked down. Her shoulders slumped. "It's her _kekkei genkai_, right?" Benihiko was the last possessor of the blood-sculpting art, and six months ago Lady Tsunade had made it abundantly clear that that put her and everyone around her at risk. It had been the Hokage's hope that by concealing the facts about Benihiko's bloodline they could prevent exactly this kind of attack. It had worked well, until now.

"Yes," said Kakashi. "As for the 'who,' Pakkun here has detected some scents he recognizes."

Sakura's eyes shifted to Pakkun's. It might have been her imagination, but he looked grim. "Kabuto," said the hound without preamble. "And Orochimaru, of course."

***

Neji stalked down the halls of the administration building, and on catching sight of the look on his face everyone, even more senior _jounin_, cleared hurriedly out of the way. This was a wise decision on their part.

When he reached the double doors leading to the Hokage's office he did not stop to knock, just pushed them open unceremoniously. Everyone already inside turned to look at him.

Tsunade was seated behind her desk, her aide Shizune standing behind her and to the right. In front of the desk were Sakura, Lee, and Hinata.

"Neji Hyuuga," said the Hokage. "I don't remember summoning you."

"Is it true?" he demanded. "Has Benihiko Yakuho been kidnapped?"

Tsunade folded her hands and regarded him coldly. "Yes. And Master Yakuho is dead."

That stopped him. He hadn't heard about the old potter's death. Another crime to add to his toll, and this one could not be undone.

"I am aware," continued the Hokage, after letting this news sink in a moment, "of your responsibility in all this, Neji. I have been in contact with Hyuuga-sama, and have agreed to let him deal with you. You should nevertheless be aware of the danger your actions have created not just for Benihiko, but for the whole village. I expect better of my _jounin._"

Neji took a deep breath. He was ignoring a summons by Lord Hyuuga as they spoke, and at any moment he expected to feel his curse mark begin to burn. But perhaps Hiashi had to be looking at him to activate the mark – he wasn't really sure. In any case it would be no more than he deserved, and surely no more painful than the unaccustomed feeling of shame now clenched in his gut. He would face Hiashi later.

"Are you assembling a team to retrieve Benihiko?" he asked, his calm voice belying his inner turmoil.

Tsunade inclined her head slightly. "Yes. I will be sending all of those who fought with her clan last time, as they have experience both with her and with her jutsu, which may have been co-opted by Kabuto."

That explained the presence of Sakura, Lee, and Hinata. Tenten was currently away on a mission. "You do not think I would prove useful?" said Neji carefully.

"I never thought I would say this," replied Tsunade, "but I do not trust your judgment in this matter. Our opponent is Kabuto, and perhaps even Orochimaru, and the stakes are very high. If we allow him to acquire the blood-sculpting art he could use it against us, with disastrous consequences. We cannot afford any more mistakes."

No one had ever questioned Neji's competence before, least of all himself. Yet he could not deny the rightness of the Hokage's words: this was his fault and he had no defense. He had allowed his anger at the Main House to cloud his vision and control his actions. He had tried to impose his own will on an innocent woman who had the right to choose for herself. It was Hinata and the _chuunin_ exam all over again, except that this time someone was dead. Had he really made no progress since then?

"Tsunade-sama," he began, "I acknowledge that I have erred. I … regret my actions, and want very much to repair the damage I have done. I am more motivated than any other shinobi to complete this mission. I believe this makes me an ideal choice for the team. And you know my skills – I am better equipped than anyone here to combat Kabuto."

She stared at him, and Neji thought that this must be what it felt like to others when he turned his Byakugan on them – this exposed feeling, this nervous awareness of being evaluated minutely.

"No," said Tsunade finally. "A clear-headed absence of emotion is best in this situation. And only one Byakugan user is required – a second would be redundant."

Hinata looked down at the floor, avoiding his eyes. This was the first time her Byakugan had ever been preferred to his.

"Hokage-sama," she said softly. "I think … I am not feeling so well." She gave a tiny cough, fooling nobody. "P-perhaps you should send Neji-nii san instead."

Tsunade frowned slightly. "You want to step aside for him, Hinata? Do you really think that is in the best interests of the mission?"

Hinata looked up at Tsunade steadily. She was not even blushing. "Yes," she answered softly but clearly, "I do."

Tsunade heaved a sigh and sat back in her chair. "All right then," she said, still looking at Hinata. "Neji will go in your place. But Neji" –she turned to look hard at him and her voice took on an edge – "do _not_ lose sight of the goal. You are to retrieve Benihiko and remove or destroy all of Kabuto's research relating to her _kekkei genkai_. That's all – this is not about revenge or redemption, and though killing Kabuto is certainly not out of the question, neither is it your main purpose. Is that understood?"

Neji nodded.

"Good," she said. "You have the highest rank of anyone on the team, but I think in this case I will assign someone else to lead the mission. Can you accept that?"

He nodded again. In another situation taking orders from a _chuunin_ might have stung, but right now he didn't have any pride to wound. "Whom will you place in command?" he asked, thinking of Sakura.

Tsunade steepled her fingers and smiled slightly. "Someone who is even more reliably cool-headed than you," she said, and her eyes focused behind him, on the hooded figure of a man who had entered the room silently during their conversation and remained unnoticed by Neji until this instant. He turned to see who it was.

It was Shino Aburame.

***

They were to depart in an hour, and in the remaining time Neji intended to speak to Lord Hiashi, to beg him to postpone his punishment until after the mission. He felt certain Hiashi would agree, but if he did not Neji could only hope that an hour would be enough time to recover sufficiently to travel.

He moved swiftly down the curving staircase that wrapped around the outside of the round red administration building, through crisp evening air lit by a crescent moon. He was not eager to receive his punishment but neither did he have time to waste.

"Neji-nii san," called a soft voice from behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to see Hinata hurrying down the stairs.

"Hinata-sama," he said, halting. "I am thankful for what you did, but I am afraid that I have no time to talk right now – I must speak with your father."

"No," she said, reaching him and laying a hand on his arm. "I will speak to him on your behalf. I will tell him that you volunteered to take my place on the mission when I refused, and that you did not have enough time to see him before departing."

Neji drew his breath in sharply. "Are you sure about that? He will not be happy with you."

Hinata smiled ruefully. "He never has been."

To this he had no response.

"I'll keep working on him while you're away," she said. "Hanabi will help me. If you succeed and return with Benihiko alive, I feel certain we can convince him to forgo the activation of your curse mark."

Her kindness made him flinch. "I … do not deserve that generosity," he replied. "Please don't risk yourself or your sister for my sake."

She shook her head slightly. "There's no risk. He can't hurt me."

This was a lie. Hiashi had already hurt Hinata incalculably.

"Besides," she continued, "I know better than anyone that the shame of a failure is punishment enough. And you are very strong – I have faith that you'll get her back."

He felt a sudden sharp urge to confess to her, who understood his feelings better than anyone. "I was so angry," he said hoarsely. "I lost control. Like before. All I could think about was how the acquisition of her jutsu would give your family another advantage over mine. I said terrible things to her."

Hinata's eyes were whiter than the moon. "But didn't she tell you? About what happened?"

"No. I didn't exactly give her the chance."

"She refused him," said Hinata quietly. "He kept demanding that she demonstrate her _kekkei genkai_ until finally she had no choice. She sculpted a single red _kunai_ and he was impressed. He told her that her jutsu and the Byakugan together would be unbeatable. But she didn't let him go any further – she pulled up her sleeve and showed him her arm, and said she'd already cut off one limb to escape the destiny of her _kekkei genkai_ and she didn't want to lose another."

If she'd hit him on the chest with her Gentle Fist it would not have hurt as much as her words. What little justification there might have been for his actions was illusory, because Benihiko had refused. _Of course_ she had refused. Having just escaped one kind of imprisonment at great cost, she would not willingly enter into another. He had known this, somewhere in the back of his mind, but had ignored his instincts in the face of practicality and political expediency.

And now Benihiko, and all of Konoha, might have to pay the price for his idiocy.

"I am a fool," he whispered.

"No," said Hinata. "You made a foolish mistake. But that's not who you are, just as _my_ inadequacies are not who _I_ am."

He looked up at her, and, incredibly, she was smiling. "I forgive you," she said to him. "Now go and make it right."

He went.


	4. Unorthodoxy

_Unorthodoxy_

_Awakening, she felt cold. It was a new sensation to her, for her chakra-laden blood usually made her impervious to all but the most extreme temperature changes. Yet now she was shivering and could feel the prickling rise of gooseflesh on her skin, and she knew instinctively, from some ancient part of her hindbrain, that this was _cold. _She didn't like it._

_She began to struggle weakly and felt another sensation – that of being restrained. There were sturdy straps across her chest, her legs, and her left arm. Only her head had freedom of movement. She turned it slightly to the left and the right, sweeping out her surroundings with her eyes. She was lying on an elevated cot surrounded by many strange instruments, some of which beeped or flashed. The lighting was dim and she was alone._

_Her attempt to move had made her more aware of her body, and now she felt a third sensation: pain. It was everywhere, a universal dull ache and a throbbing nausea, made worse with each successive beat of her heart. There was also a more localized agony coming from the right side of her body. She looked down to see what might be causing it._

_There was only emptiness, a stupefying lack where her flesh ended about five centimeters below the right shoulder. The stump was raw and inflamed, skinless meat around ghostly white bone, invaded by a thick clear tube that snaked outward to feed into a plastic cylinder near her feet. The tube was dyed crimson and the cylinder was about a quarter filled with blood._

_At the sight of her own blood it all came back to her – the ninja lying in wait for her at the studio, Master Yakuho dead on the floor, the inexplicable failure of her jutsu, the crazed serpentine face of her abductor._

_She screamed then._

***

It was midday and they were resting near a small creek while Sakura kept watch. The sun was high overhead in a blue sky flecked with small cottony clouds, its light the subdued gold of early autumn. There was no breeze, and the only sounds Sakura could hear were the steady breathing of her teammates, the cheerful babble of the creek, and the calls of birds and insects from the surrounding high grasses and sparse stands of trees. It would have been an idyllic setting had the situation not been so grave.

She was mentally and physically exhausted from the night's journey, and with a small sigh she reached down and began digging in one of the many pouches on her belt. At last she found what she wanted, a round white pill, which she popped into her mouth and bit down on with a loud _crunch_.

"You'll pay for that later," said a voice from behind her – Neji coming from the campsite.

"I'm aware of that," said Sakura crossly. She was a medical ninja after all, and no one knew the heavy toll exacted by soldier pills better than she did. "But I'm tired, and I had to do something if I want to stay awake."

"You could go rest now. I'll relieve you."

"You're not immune from exhaustion yourself."

He just shrugged in response, watching the light play on the water. In her medical opinion he looked terrible – even paler than usual, with dark shadows under his eyes.

"I could give you something to put you out," she offered. She always carried a variety of medicines and poisons along on missions, including a rather powerful sedative.

He shook his head. "No, I couldn't be sure it would wear off in time."

That was quite true. She thought a moment, then extracted another of the white pills from her kit and held it out to him. "Then how about this?"

He glanced at it, then with one swift fluid motion reached out to take it from her. In the next moment she heard him bite down on it and swallow.

"Sorry if it tastes bad," she said. "It's my own recipe."

"Hn."

Having just taken the soldier pill she knew she wouldn't sleep, so she remained at her post, figuring two shinobi on watch was better than one. Neji was very still and seemed to be meditating, staring fixedly into the distance.

They were somewhere in the Land of Rivers, a little country sitting between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind. They had pushed all night to get here, following Shino southwest from Konoha.

"We will go to a town called Nashi in the Land of Rivers," he had informed them as they set off, his voice issuing from inside his voluminous green parka.

"Is that where Kabuto is?" Neji had asked.

Shino shook his head, or at least seemed to – it was hard to tell under his hood. "I doubt it."

"Then why would we go there?"

"To gather information. No one in the Leaf knows where Kabuto is based right now – my bugs and Kakashi's hounds have already failed to track him. But Nashi is a lawless place where various criminals gather, and there is a man there who might be able to tell us something."

" 'Might?' Is it really wise to spend so much time on the off chance this person knows something? Every second we waste decreases our odds of success."

It had taken Shino a while to respond to that. Sakura had been sure he would be angry – certainly Neji would never permit one of his team to question his authority like that. But when Shino spoke it was in the same thoughtful tone as always: "My father and I have had dealings with this person before. If anyone can tell us where Kabuto is, he can. In fact my familiarity with him is the reason I was chosen for this mission." Shino was often used for espionage, which was either the cause or the effect of his reserved and secretive nature – no one was quite sure which.

Neji had seemed satisfied with this explanation and held his peace for the rest of the journey, though from his current restlessness Sakura surmised that he was still worried about wasting time. But there was no help for it – a rescue mission would be impossible until they knew where to go.

A couple of hours passed during which Sakura almost forgot Neji was there, he was so quiet. She whiled away the time by taking a careful inventory of the contents of her kit and periodically rising to make a circuit of the immediate vicinity. She had just finished another one of these and settled down beside the creek again when Neji abruptly rose and she started, turning to see Shino standing behind them. She hadn't heard his approach at all.

"Shino!" she breathed in relief, her heart racing. There was a rustling of bushes and Lee came to join them, stretching and yawning.

"That was a good nap!" he said, and started jumping in place. "I feel refreshed and ready to go!"

"I told you to rest," said Shino, and it was clear he was addressing Neji even though no one could see where he was looking behind his dark glasses. "We may have to move quickly in the next few days and I'll need everyone at their best. I may also need your Byakugan very soon, in which case _you_ will need a full supply of chakra."

Neji blinked. "Sakura was kind enough to lend me a soldier pill," he replied calmly. "I have more than enough chakra right now. My Byakugan is at your disposal."

Lee stopped jumping and his eyes widened. "Oooh Neji, remember what Gai-sensei said! Soldier pills are no substitute for the natural energy of youth! It is unwise to rely on them!"

Neji raised an eyebrow. "Sakura made them," he told his teammate.

Lee froze, clearly torn between Gai's advice and his longstanding affection for Sakura. "If Sakura made them," he said slowly, "then … then I am sure it is all right!" He smiled widely and gave Sakura a thumbs-up.

She wasn't really sure how to respond to this, but was saved from making a decision by Shino.

"Then please use your Byakugan now," he said to Neji as if the exchange with Lee had never happened, "to look about three kilometers west."

Neji nodded, turned to the west, and activated his Byakugan. The only outward signs that he was doing anything were his slightly creased brow and the veins that stood out around his eyes. "There's a town," he reported.

Shino nodded. "Then we're right where I expected," he said. "That town is Nashi. Let's go."

In no time at all they had reached Nashi, which grew from the grassy plain like a grayish-brown wart. It was a mean little place of dilapidated clapboard buildings and dusty streets, whose inhabitants seemed to a man to have nothing better to do than stare at the newcomers. One or two of them whistled at Sakura, causing Neji to have to restrain Lee.

Shino led them to the town's largest building, through the front door into a large dimly lit room filled with smoke and a number of low rectangular tables. People were gathered at some of these tables, eating, drinking, and talking in low voices. A few glanced at them as they entered and then looked quickly away. Sakura supposed Leaf-nin were not a very common sight here.

She might have been wrong about that, though, as Shino seemed totally at ease. He strolled casually to a table at the far side of the room and sat down. His team joined him, Lee looking around avidly.

"Someone will be around eventually to take your order," said Shino. "You should all eat – the food is not that bad, and I want you to keep up your strength."

"What about you?" asked Sakura.

Shino stood up. "I'm going to find our target. He'll be in here, somewhere. I'll bring him back once I've found him." Then he turned his back on them and disappeared quickly into the haze of smoke.

"How," asked Sakura of no one in particular, "does he see anything in those glasses?"

"Perhaps he does not," Lee speculated. "Perhaps the bugs tell him where to go."

"That's … possible," she admitted. No one really understood the relationship between Shino and his bugs. Somehow he communicated with them, and it seemed they also communicated with him, for he was able to use them for intelligence-gathering and tracking. But what exactly was the extent of this contact – was Shino in constant communion with the bugs?

He was gone a while, and in the meantime they followed his instructions and ordered food. Sakura didn't really want to eat in this place, as it seemed dirty and none of the choices were very nutritious, but she couldn't dispute Shino's logic and finally settled on an innocuous-sounding dish with fish and rice.

She was still picking at it when he reappeared, seeming to take shape out of the smoke. Behind him stood a seedy-looking man with a beefy build and thinning hair.

"This is Bito," said Shino simply. He sat down and motioned the man to join him. Bito leered and dropped heavily into a seat.

"Hello," he said, staring at Sakura. Thankfully Lee seemed not to notice.

"Bito," said Shino calmly, "we've come to ask about Kabuto Yakushi."

Bito's smiled disappeared immediately. "_That_," he replied, "is not someone I like to talk about. It's not safe."

Shino was unperturbed. "I'm aware of that. But I am also prepared to compensate you for the danger."

Bito's face took on a crafty look. "Well," he said slowly, "that's different, then. But as this is more danger than usual and you seem to be in a hurry"—his eyes flicked over the assembled Leaf-nin—"I'll be wanting more than the usual rate."

Shino nodded. "Twice the usual."

Bito laughed and folded his arms. "No," he said. "I don't think I want money this time. The Leaf has things I find more valuable."

Above his glasses, on the narrow strip of forehead visible underneath his hood, Shino's eyebrows contracted. "What do you mean?"

"Well, for instance, there are secret jutsu known only to your village. One or two of those would fetch a high price."

Sakura's mouth fell open. Beside her, Lee said "Oh!" and Neji snorted. Bito's request was utterly outrageous and everyone there, Bito included, knew it.

"You know that's impossible," said Shino. "Do you even know where Kabuto is?"

"I do," said Bito. "But I won't tell you for mere money. You're asking me to take a huge risk, and I want to be compensated commensurately. It's a hidden jutsu or nothing."

"Then it's nothing," said Shino flatly.

"But Shino—" Lee began, only to be cut off when Shino held up a single hand to silence him.

"We have other business in town," Shino continued. "We may want some more information, of a less sensitive nature, tomorrow. I trust you'll be available then?"

Bito shrugged. "Sure," he said. "And if it really is 'less sensitive,' then money will do fine. It's too bad I couldn't help you today."

"Yes," Shino replied, "It's too bad. Tomorrow, then." He rose and gestured for his team to do the same. Shino dropped some money on the table for their bill and they left.

"Well, _that_ was a waste of time," said Neji when they were out on the street again. Sakura was breathing deeply, trying to clear the stench of smoke from her nostrils.

"On the contrary," said Shino. "We now know that Bito possesses the information we require. If not he would've said so and tried to sell us something else. Instead, he demanded a price he knew we could never pay, so he could continue to appear knowledgeable without telling us what we wanted to know."

"If you're really sure he knows where Kabuto is," said Neji coldly, "then there are ways of forcing it out of him."

Sakura looked at him sharply. "Torture?" she said. "Are you really serious, Neji?"

He closed his eyes and inclined his head slightly. "The stakes are very high."

Torture was a fact of the shinobi world and Sakura knew that, but her medical training gave her a strong bias against it. In many ways it seemed the exact opposite of her specialty, the methodical destruction of the body as opposed to its restoration. In the Leaf even interrogation specialists like Ibiki tended to avoid physical torture, opting instead for a subtle kind of psychological gamesmanship. That this method was more effective than the alternatives was only part of the reason Sakura and her teacher Lady Tsunade preferred it.

"Any of those 'ways' of making him talk would destroy his value as a future informant," said Shino. "And no one here has Ibiki's skill. We could never be sure that he wasn't feeding us some lie to get us as far away from here as possible before going deeper underground. That's why torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information."

"But then, what are we supposed to do, Shino?" asked Lee. "How are we going to find Kabuto?"

"Weren't you listening?" asked Shino. "We'll come back tomorrow and try again."

"But what makes you think he'll talk tomorrow?" asked Neji impatiently.

The sunlight flashed briefly on Shino's glasses as he turned slightly to look back toward the building they had just vacated.

"Things change …"

***

_Her screams brought the snake-man to the room. He materialized at her side out of the darkness and busied himself checking on the various displays. She fought against her restraints, desperate to strike at him, however feebly._

_"Calm down," he said without looking at her. "You mustn't strain yourself. The anticoagulant I formulated to neutralize your jutsu also made your right arm dissolve." He tapped two fingers against the cylinder, eliciting a glassy ringing sound. "That was useful for collecting samples, but you lost a lot of blood. You're quite weak right now."_

_"Strong enough," she rasped, "to kill you."_

_He turned to face her then, and at the sight of his eyes she had to suppress another scream. His face was bizarrely mismatched, a disharmonious union of two distinct halves. One side was paler than the other with a vertically slit pupil, while the other fluctuated between expressions of pain and rapture. Malice and madness warred for possession of his soul._

_"I don't think so," he answered. "You see, that's already been tried."_

***

They took a small room in town and spent an uneasy night. Neji again did not sleep and just sat with his arms folded, radiating irritation. Lee's snoring also made it difficult for Sakura to sleep, though it didn't seem to bother Shino in the slightest. Around noon the next day Shino checked his watch and said, "It's about time. We'll go find Bito again."

"Time for _what_?" asked Sakura, but Shino was already on his way out the door and didn't stop to give her an answer.

They went to the same dumpy restaurant as yesterday, and this time spotted Bito as soon as they entered, sitting at a table near the front door. There was an untouched plate of food in front of him and he was hunched over with his head resting on his arms.

"Bito," Shino greeted him, sitting down uninvited across from the larger man, "how are you?"

Bito raised his head to regard them blearily, and from where she stood with Lee and Neji behind Shino, Sakura thought the answer to that question was self-evident. Bito's skin was white and waxy, his eyes bloodshot.

"Not great," he replied. "I seem to be coming down with something."

Shino nodded. "As expected. I was told it would take about eighteen hours for you to begin to feel the effects."

Bito went rigid and his eyes widened in alarm. "_What_ effects?" he demanded. "You did this to me? But I was careful not to eat or drink anything while we talked – I know how you ninja are!"

"I don't have to use food to poison someone," said Shino. "I'm carrying thousands of hypodermic needles as we speak." He extended his left hand to show Bito a tiny black beetle crawling across his knuckles.

Bito swore and stood up hastily, nearly falling over backwards.

"You had one of those … those _things_ bite me?"

"No. I had several of them crawl into your body while we spoke and begin producing a very specific toxin, based on a rare and deadly poison formulated by Sasori of the Hidden Sand."

"They're _inside me_?" Bito whispered, looking like he might faint.

"Yes. They're also laying eggs. Their offspring will be capable of producing the toxin as well. Over time the concentration will increase."

"Wh-what will happen to me?"

"Sakura here is the only one to ever successfully produce an antidote to this poison. She can answer you better than me."

Bito's eyes shifted to Sakura's in silent supplication.

"This is … the same poison used on Kankuro?" she asked Shino. The fabric of his hood creased and then uncreased—a nod. "Then once the concentration reaches a lethal dose you'll have exactly three days left to live. First will come muscle pain and weakness, followed by unconsciousness and death."

"I've adjusted my bugs' rate of reproduction to give you about two weeks before the lethal dosage is reached," said Shino. "I imagine you'll keep getting sicker during that period."

Bito sat down weakly, put his hands over his face. "You said she knows the antidote. What do you want for it?"

"You already know."

He uncovered his face and looked at Shino dully. "You could get me killed, you realize that?"

Shino was silent.

Bito sighed. "All right," he said. "I've heard from a source I trust that Kabuto is using one of Orochimaru's old hideouts, about two days northwest of here in the Land of Earth. It's next to a lake fifty kilometers due south of the Hidden Stone Village."

"Thank you," said Shino cordially. He stood up. "We will of course pay you for the information. Twice the normal rate."

"Wait! What about the antidote? And I want you to take these _things_ out of me."

"That will have to wait until I've verified your information. If it checks out I will order my bugs to begin producing the antidote instead of the toxin. They were bred with both capabilities."

"But … can you _do _that? From such a great distance?"

"Oh yes," replied Shino. "In the worst case scenario I can always send messenger bugs to communicate with those already in your body."

"What guarantee do I have you'll keep your word?"

He shrugged. "You'll just have to trust me. Sakura is the only one who knows how to make the antidote and she's with us. You have no alternative."

Bito's eyes narrowed. He looked quite desperate. "I could just take the girl from you now." Around the room a number of armed men were rising from their seats and heading in Bito's direction.

"I wouldn't try that," advised Shino calmly. A cloud of insects emanated from his sleeves and hood to form a protective buzzing cordon around the Leaf-nin. "My bugs like her."

Bito yelled and backed away until he reached the wall, pressing against it like he hoped to sink into its rough wood planking. "Fine!" he shouted. "Just put them away and _get out_!"

"Of course," said Shino. "Thank you for your help." He raised an arm and the insects disappeared quickly into his sleeve. It looked almost like Shino had vacuumed them up in his parka.

The Leaf-nin left together, three of them too stunned to speak. Sakura was wondering whether being popular among Shino's bugs was a good or bad thing.

"You … were planning that the whole time," Neji said at last, in awe.

"I did hope," said Shino, "that it wouldn't be necessary. But I thought Bito might be reluctant to talk, which is why I brought along these new poison bugs. We've been breeding them since the mission to rescue the Kazekage. This is their first time in action. They performed well."

"Bito seemed quite intimidated by them," Lee agreed.

"That's not surprising," Shino responded. "He's an entomophobe."

"A what?"

"He's got a pathological fear of insects," Sakura translated.

Shino said, "It's more common than you think."

She was starting to feel a touch of it herself.


	5. The Highest Form of Flattery

_The Highest Form of Flattery_

_Her captor – she had just learned his name was Kabuto – was angry. He stood on the far side of the room with his back to her; she had to crane her neck to see him from the cot where she was confined. He was staring down at the floor with clenched fists, at the wet red mess that, only an hour before, had been a teenage boy. _

_"Dammit!" said Kabuto, and underneath his guttural cry of frustration Benihiko could make out something else, a quiet susurration like the hiss of a snake. "I thought that one would survive."_

_"It won't work," she said to him, straining to raise her voice enough to be heard across the room. "I told you before – it's a kekkei genkai. Only a Chyoubi can use it."_

_Kabuto turned to look at her, and she had become so accustomed to his mismatched face that this time she didn't even shudder at the sight of it. Both of his eyes – the snake-like one with its vertical pupil and the normal one – narrowed. "And I told you that I am the greatest medical expert the ninja world has ever seen. I have conducted thousands of experiments and achieved things other shinobi, with their quaint notions of ethics and morals, have only dreamed of. It is only a matter of time before I learn to integrate your art into my own body."_

_"Those experiments you speak of – did you conduct them, or did Orochimaru?" Kabuto had, in a moment of talkativeness, told her of his own demented history. Now she took every opportunity to needle him about it, hoping to undermine his already fragile sense of self._

_He looked confused for a second, then shrugged. "Both of us did," he replied. "Kabuto—I mean I – often assisted Lord Orochimaru. I have decades of results and expertise to draw on."_

_"Why bother? You already seem strong enough."_

_Kabuto strode across the room to lean over her, his face a hand's width from hers. "Fool!" he hissed, the snakelike tone now dominant in his voice. "There is no such thing as 'strong enough'. There are always more jutsu to learn, and I will have them all, even those reserved to a single bloodline! It is unjust that an accident of birth should deny me power, and I will right this wrong through science. I will combine in a single form all the most powerful jutsu in the world, and become a perfect being!"_

_"Evidently your definition of 'perfect' doesn't include sanity."_

_Kabuto laughed, and somehow his mirth was more disturbing than his anger. "Sanity is overrated," he said at last. "It's another word for mediocrity. The weak cling to it to console themselves for their inadequacies. They lack the will to pursue their goals to the end, so they convince themselves that they never wanted to anyway. Pathetic."_

_"What's pathetic," said Benihiko, "is a man who's so weak he has to steal everything, his powers and his identity, from other people. Even the frailest civilian who knows his own soul is stronger than you."_

_Kabuto straightened up and regarded her coldly, and she wondered if she'd gone too far. "It would seem," he said calmly, the hissing now subsided somewhat, "that we have different notions of strength. But since you are the one who is imprisoned and helpless, and I am the one imprisoning you, I think I still prefer mine. In any case, you are going to help me become stronger. It will require more time than I originally thought to take your jutsu directly, so in the meantime we will settle for an intermediate stage. It should suffice to drive away the Leaf-nin now headed here to rescue you."_

_Her heart began to pound at the mention of a rescue, and she fought to hide the sweet surge of hope the news brought._

_"Unfortunately," Kabuto continued, "for this stage I shall need more than your blood. I will need your talent, as well. You are going to use your gifts to help me."_

_Now it was Benihiko's turn to laugh. "I don't think so."_

_Kabuto reached into a pouch at his hip and withdrew a single kunai._

_"Oh no," said Benihiko sarcastically. "Are you going to torture me now? I've been dreading this – pleeeeease don't cut me." Any flesh wound he inflicted on her would close up in a matter of seconds – another aspect of her kekkai genkai._

_Kabuto's arm lashed out in a vicious arc, the silver point of the kunai flashing in the laboratory's dim light. But he didn't cut her – instead, he severed one of the numerous IVs leading into her left arm._

_"I don't have to cut you," he said. "I've already inflicted serious damage to your body, by causing you to lose your right arm. Your kekkei genkai dulls your pain, so I'm willing to bet you've never felt true agony – just a weak approximation of it. That line I just cut was anesthetic. Without it, and with all the blood I've taken from you weakening your jutsu, you're finally going to feel the real pain of losing a limb. You're finally going to hurt like everyone else."_

_A few hours later the anesthetic remaining in Benihiko's body wore off. It wasn't long after that that she agreed to help him._

_***_

The Hidden Stone Village was aptly named. The countryside surrounding it was comprised of small hills covered in slate-gray rocks of all sizes, from tiny pebbles to house-sized boulders. The only vegetation was the occasional tuft of dry brown grass or the reddish-green stain of lichen, and the wind from the east made otherworldly noises as it passed over and between the rock formations. The overall feeling was desolate and alien.

"Neji," said Shino sometime in the afternoon, "please use your Byakugan to look to the north."

"There's a lake," Neji reported after a moment. "About two kilometers from here."

"Can you see anything out of the ordinary?"

He increased the supply of chakra to his eyes, straining at the limits of his perception to resolve details around the shore. On the southwestern shoreline he spotted a rectangular building whose lower floors were cut deep into the earth. When he tried to look inside, however, everything dissolved into a blur, as thought he was looking through a poorly focused microscope.

"There's definitely a building. But I can't tell whether there are people inside it or not – something is blocking my vision."

His teammates, except for Shino, all made noises of surprise. "Blocking the Byakugan?" said Sakura incredulously. "Is that even possible?'

"I've never encountered a jutsu capable of it before," said Neji, "but our opponent is Kabuto, so I wouldn't rule anything out. But there _is _a building there, just as Bito said. I think it's clear we should go there." He glanced over at Shino for confirmation.

"Agreed," said Shino. "We'll try to infiltrate that building – in six hours."

"What?!" exclaimed Lee. "Why six hours? Why not now, when we are so close?"

It pained Neji to admit it, but he agreed with Lee. There was no sense in delaying when they were so near their goal. He said as much.

"Six hours," repeated Shino. "We've traveled all day and night to get here, and I am exhausted. I can tell the rest of you are too, and we cannot afford to engage Kabuto at anything less than our best. We will take this time to rest. This applies in particular to you, Neji, and you, Sakura. Neither of you has slept in some time."

Sakura glanced quickly at Neji and sighed. "You're right, of course. But who'll keep watch?"

"My bugs will. They are far more alert than any human observer, and they can awaken me at the first sign of trouble."

Neji didn't know how he – or Lee, for that matter – could be expected to sleep at a time like this, but Shino's tone brooked no argument, and Neji's trust in the _chuunin_'s judgment had grown substantially since Nashi. Thus he remained silent as Shino led them into a small cave in the side of a hill, and resolved to rest as best he could. He _was_ very tired; his eyes were itching and he felt a faint tremor in his limbs, a common side effect of soldier pills. He had barely sat down in the damp darkness of the cave, his back against a stone wall, before his eyes closed and he lost consciousness.

Then Lee was shaking him violently awake, whispering, "Neji-kun! Neji-kun! You must wake up!"

"I'm awake, I'm awake," said Neji, brushing his teammate's hands away. The light streaming in from the mouth of the cave was darker and more slanted – it was nearly evening. But Neji did not think six hours had passed. Shino's bugs must have detected something.

"There's someone coming," said Shino quietly, crouching near the entrance and peering outward through his sunglasses. "From the direction of the lake."

Neji didn't wait for orders. He engaged his Byakugan and looked directly through the cave wall, out across the rocky terrain toward the north. Almost immediately he made out a pair of figures moving toward their position at great speed.

"Two shinobi," he said tersely. "They are both carrying a great many weapons." In pouches on their belts and on their backs, he could see a truly huge number of _kunai_, all of which seemed to glow strangely. The only one he had ever known to carry such an arsenal was Tenten, and her weapons were far more varied – she would never have taken so many copies of just one type.

"Are they weapons experts then, like Tenten?" asked Lee.

Neji shook his head. "I don't think so. They have a lot of weapons, but they're all _kunai_."

"Why would anybody rely on only _kunai_? Even Tenten can only throw so many at once."

"These don't seem to be normal weapons. They're … different somehow. It's like they're encased in chakra."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Neji understood. The _kunai_ _were_ encased in chakra – and blood. Behind Shino, Sakura gasped; clearly she had come to the same conclusion.

"The blood-sculpting art!" she said. "Those _kunai_ are covered in a shell of chakra and blood! But does this mean that Kabuto has already mastered Benihiko's jutsu?"

Neji disengaged his Byakugan but continued to stare into the stone pensively. "No, I don't think so," he said slowly. "At least not entirely. The Chyoubi didn't bother to carry a lot of projectiles – they made their own, in far greater numbers and with more flexibility. The only reason to use a technique like this is if Kabuto's control of the blood sculpting art is still incomplete."

"I agree," said Shino. "Though it's clear that Kabuto knows we're here, at least we know that we're not too late to stop him."

"Should we go and take out those two shinobi now?" asked Lee. He was already standing up, stretching his biceps in preparation.

"Yes," said Shino. "Let's go."

"Shino," said Sakura, lightly laying a hand on his shoulder to stop him from stepping out of the cave, "before we go, I should warn you. You've never fought this jutsu before, so you may not know the damage it's capable of. Whatever you do, _don't let the projectiles hit you_. They'll do more damage than normal weapons, both to your organs and to your chakra network."

"I understand," said Shino. He exited, followed closely by Sakura, Lee, and Neji.

Even without his Byakugan Neji could see the tiny figures of their enemies in the distance, growing larger every moment. They seemed to know the exact location of the Leaf-nin, for they were headed directly at their current position.

"Take cover behind the rocks," Shino ordered. "Don't engage them until I give the order. Sakura, stay out of the fight if you can – I want you to conserve your chakra for healing Benihiko, and us, if necessary."

"Yes," Sakura replied, kneeling behind a large boulder. Neji and Lee found their own rocks, while Shino crouched low and held a hand up as though testing the wind. Presently a tiny insect alighted on his finger, and Shino brought his hand down closer to his face. His high collar prevented them from seeing his mouth, but nevertheless it seemed clear there was some sort of conversation going on.

"One hundred meters," said Shino to his team, "and headed right for us. On my signal, Lee and Neji, you will engage them. I will stay back and try to disable them with my insects. If we are lucky I'll be able to drain them of chakra before they have a chance to do either of you any harm."

Some might have taken it as cowardice, but Neji knew better. Shino was no coward; Shino was a mid- to long-range fighter and would be most helpful to them at a distance. For his part, Neji intended to kill his target before the bugs ever had a chance. He engaged his Byakugan and waited.

After a few tense minutes of silence Shino held up a hand to draw Lee and Neji's attention. Abruptly he jabbed it forward towards the north and said, "Now!"

Lee and Neji leapt out from hiding, moving sideways in opposite directions. Neji had been watching the approaching shinobi through the stone, and knew already that they were both formidable. Finally encountering them face-to-face, he saw with a start that they were identical twins – a pair of slim dark-skinned men with long braided hair, their faces as alike as two prints of the same photograph. The only discernable difference was that one wore a blue jumpsuit and had a wireless radio headset clipped to his ear, while the other wore tan and had no radio. The blue-clad ninja was nearest to Neji.

"There!" the man said as he sighted Neji, and he quickly drew a pair of _kunai_ and hurled them at his target. In the waning light of the setting sun they shone like violet beacons, glowing purple with a power Neji had last seen six months ago in the forest outside Konoha.

But it had been altogether more impressive the first time; Neji simply stepped to one side to avoid the projectiles, and to his left he saw Lee do the same to avoid the weapons of his opponent, the shinobi in tan.

"You will have to do better than that!" Lee called. "That is _genin_-level ninjutsu! No matter how deadly those weapons are, it does not matter if you cannot hit us!"

In response his opponent grinned, in the exact instant that Neji, with his near-360 degree vision, saw the two _kunai_ he'd just dodged flying back at him from behind.

"Lee, look out behind you!" he cried, ducking barely in time. The two _kunai_ whizzed over his head and narrowly missed him, and then he had to roll to avoid them as they came around for another pass. A glance told him his warning had been heard in time – Lee was dodging and rolling just like he was, seemingly uninjured.

"How are they doing this?" Lee called. "Have they learned to control the weapons' flight like the Chyoubi did?"

Neji focused hard on the twins' chakra networks, found the answer. "No!" he called back to Lee. "They're wind types! They're just using the wind to direct the _kunai_!"

If Kabuto wanted to replicate the Chyoubi jutsu without actually possessing it, it made sense that he would seek out powerful wind-users like this and arm them with chakra-coated weapons. But this version was still nothing compared to the original, for even a talented wind-user couldn't master more than about five directions at once, while Benihiko had been able to direct upwards of a hundred projectiles, each following a different path.

This tepid imitation was nothing Neji couldn't handle. The purple _kunai_ were very dangerous if you were hit with them, but that was a very big _if_. Neji charged his opponent at top speed, shooting an intense blast of chakra ahead of him to deflect the approaching projectiles. He knew he could not knock them off course completely, but from this distance even a subtle perturbation of their flight was enough to prevent them from homing in on their target. The wind-user, of course, could not see the chakra Neji had released; to him it must have seemed as if his weapons had suddenly developed minds of their own and staged a minor rebellion. He swore and redoubled his efforts, sweating and pouring more and more chakra into his wind jutsu. With every passing second Neji closed the gap between them.

Off to the left, fully visible via Neji's Byakugan, Lee was moving so quickly he registered only as a green blur. He had shed his leg weights and opened at least some of the Inner Gates, and was now faster than his enemy's wind by an order of magnitude. Pursuing _kunai_ lagged far behind him; his arrival at the tan-clad shinobi's position was imminent.

Suddenly the pair of _kunai_ ineffectively chasing Lee dropped to the ground, and his opponent reached down and drew four more weapons, also purple. He flung them carelessly upwards and began manipulating their flight before they came back down, directing them to circle erratically around him to form a whirring protective barrier. It would have been suicide to try to charge through that screen; Lee was forced to halt his approach.

Neji's opponent, the ninja with the radio, was not unaware of his own predicament. After a swift appraising glance sideways he imitated his brother, and Neji too had to come to a stop, separated from the enemy by a deadly shifting wall of _kunai_.

"What now?" asked Neji coldly. "You can't keep that up forever, and you can't hit us with your weapons. Your best option is surrender."

The tan ninja, standing opposite Lee, heard. "You're right, Leaf-nin!" he called back in response. "We can't do this forever – it's time for this to end. Call Lord Kabuto, brother, and get him to give us the black!"

"Right!" said Neji's opponent with a quick nod of his head. Then he spoke into the mouthpiece of his radio. "My lord? Have you been listening? We must have the black _kunai_ now – our opponents are able to avoid the purple." He paused, listening to the response. Neji strained to hear but was too far away.

The blue twin suddenly smiled and gave his brother a thumbs-up. "He agrees! He'll tell the girl immediately!"

Neji stiffened on hearing this, but before he could say anything Lee asked the question for him.

"What girl?" Lee demanded. "You cannot mean Benihiko!"

"That's _exactly_ who he means," snickered the ninja in tan. "All this blood isn't ours – it's hers. Lord Kabuto, ah, _persuaded_ her to use her jutsu to help us."

"She would never lend her jutsu to someone like you," said Neji. He was utterly certain of that now; he'd left all his doubts back in Konoha.

The twin in blue smiled unpleasantly. "No under normal circumstances, no," he agreed. "But it seems she's rather susceptible to pain, having never properly felt it before. Lord Kabuto's already gotten her obedience once, and he'll do it again."

Now that he had a moment to look, to really focus on the _kunai_, Neji could see that the twins weren't lying. It was obvious that the chakra encasing the flying weapons wasn't theirs; it was of a different nature entirely, without any hint of wind. It began to darken and shrink inward slightly, growing denser, more lethal.

"That didn't take too long," mocked his opponent.

Lee's enemy didn't wait for the transformation to finish. As soon as he saw the _kunai_'s color begin to change he let out a great "Ha!" of triumph and sent his circling weapons forward in wedge formation at waist-height. Lee tensed his legs, preparing to leap out of the way at the last second.

He never got the chance. Before they had cleared a meter's distance from their master, the projectiles wobbled and then clattered down to the earth. One of them landed point-down and gouged out a deep hole in the rocky ground.

"What the—" began the shinobi in tan.

"You got careless," said a nearby voice, and then Shino stepped out of hiding from behind a boulder. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and the lenses of his glasses caught the orange glow of the sunset. "You stood still for too long, giving my bugs a chance to reach you and begin feeding on your chakra. Now they've taken enough to stop you from using your wind techniques."

The twin's face registered terror, and he began a frantic series of hand gestures in a futile attempt to lift his weapons off the ground. They didn't budge. "Bugs …" the man whispered, and before his horrified gaze a tiny beetle emerged from his sleeve, crawled down his wrist, and took to the air. "Get them off me! Get them off!" He swatted wildly at his own body, desperate to kill the tiny invaders before they stole any more of his power.

"That's useless," advised Shino calmly. "Even if you crush a few of them, the rest will just crawl inside your body for protection. If your surrender now, I'll call them off before they take your life."

"No!" screamed the man defiantly. "I'll drive them out myself – by killing you!" He jogged forward a few paces and retrieved his fallen _kunai_. They were completely black now, humming ominously and drinking in the surrounding light. He flung one at Lee and the rest at Shino. But without his wind technique he had only his aim to guide their flight, and his aim wasn't even at the level of the average _genin_. All three _kunai_ sent at Shino missed their mark. The one meant for Lee was on target, but with a laugh Lee stepped easily out of its way.

"Bad luck for you!" he said. "I train every day with someone who has ten times your skill!" He didn't give the man a second try, though – he was at close range now.

His opponent had the presence of mind to draw another black _kunai_ to defend himself; even a minor scrape would be enough to kill Lee. But no one, not even Neji, could compete with Lee's speed at close range, and again and again the _kunai_ stabbed down at Lee's position only to meet with empty air.

"Hold still!" cried the twin in frustration. He lunged forward for another strike just as Lee's fist met his jaw; with a loud _crack_ the jawbone broke and the man stumbled sideways, flailing wildly.

His right hand, which held the _kunai_, came a little too close to his thigh, and the blade's black edge drew a thin line across his flesh.

Instantly he was screaming, horrible high-pitched noises that echoed off the rocks in endless repetition. He dropped the _kunai_ and clutched at his leg, then fell on his face with a thud and was silent.

Neji had seen the whole thing in incredible detail, seen the way the black chakra encasing the _kunai_ leaked into the man's body through the small cut and invaded his veins and arteries, tearing him apart from within. It had looked every bit as painful as it sounded.

"My brother …" said the shinobi in blue, staring transfixed at the corpse. Then his eyes turned toward Neji, and his face contorted with hatred. "You're next!"

"I don't think so," said Neji. "That's what happens when you tamper with someone else's jutsu. I've seen the original blood-sculpting art, and your version is just a weak imitation. Drop your weapons and lead us to Kabuto, and you won't have to die the way your brother did."

"No!" the man spat. "You may not have noticed, but _my_ wind jutsu is working just fine. It will be more than sufficient to deal with all of you!"

Indeed, the surrounding _kunai_ – now as black as space – continued their protective flight around the wind-user, shielding him from harm. Neji's eyes could make out no insects in the immediate vicinity – apparently Shino's minions hadn't made it this far yet.

Not that it mattered.

In the moments since their color had darkened, the _kunai_'s movement had changed. They followed more or less the same paths as before, but now their progress was sluggish and their flight wobbly. The wind-user was sweating more than ever, and his breathing was raspy.

"They're too heavy for you, aren't they?" asked Neji softly. "All that effort to steal this jutsu, and you can't even control it properly." He took a few steps forward, until barely half a meter separated them.

"Be careful Neji!" called Lee. "He could send one of them after you!"

The wind-user had been trying to do just that for several seconds, his muscles trembling as he struggled to go on the offensive. But Neji wasn't worried, for he could see that the man simply didn't have the necessary power to manipulate these _kunai _as he had the others. Benihiko, somewhere in that building by the lake, had compressed the chakra and blood surrounding them to its densest level, and consequently they had become as hard to elevate with wind as cannonballs. It was amazing they were still in the air at all.

Neji didn't wait any longer. The decreased speed of the faltering _kunai_ gave him an opening and he took it. Like a striking snake, like a swooping bird of prey, his hand darted into the gap and landed squarely on his opponent's chest, and a sharp burst of chakra shot from his fingertips into the man's heart.

He dropped like a stone, his weapons falling down around him. Under normal circumstances Neji would have weakened his attack slightly to leave the enemy alive, but this time he hadn't bothered. As he looked down at his dead foe, he found he didn't feel any regret at all.


	6. The Ninth Gate

_The Ninth Gate_

_There was a thud and a clang, followed by static. Kabuto stared hard at the wireless radio, the microphone clutched in his hand. Then a voice, measured and calm, came through the speakers into the room._

_"Kabuto Yakushi, this is Shino Aburame of the Leaf."_

_For a heartbeat Kabuto was silent, then he replied, "I hear you, Leaf-nin. I presume you have killed my ninja."_

_"That's correct. But there does not need to be any more bloodshed. Turn over your hostage and all research pertaining to the blood-sculpting art, and we will let you go."_

_Kabuto made a sound, a kind of hiss that managed to convey both derision and amusement. "Even if I give you all my research I will not forget what I have learned from my investigation so far. You have seen the results already, and those were only preliminary. For all intents and purposes the kekkei genkai of the Chyoubi clan belongs to me now. As for the woman, it seems her last efforts were too much for her; she is near death. Your mission has failed, and if you wish to avoid bloodshed it is you, not me, who should give up."_

_A beat, a crackle of static, and then: "If she is near death she cannot be of any further value to you. Return her and we will not attack."_

_"On the contrary, Shino Aburame, I often derive more use from the dead than from the living. I could heal her myself if I chose, but I have decided that her corpse will better advance the next stage of my research. So I will let her die."_

_In the background several different voices could be heard, all of them angry. Shino's tone remained blandly neutral, however, as he said, "I see. If healing is what she requires, then we will provide it. With or without your cooperation."_

_The corners of Kabuto's mouth lifted into a smile, oddly twisted by the asymmetry of his features._

_"By all means, try," he said. Behind him, breathing shallowly, paler than the face of the moon, was the unconscious form of Benihiko Yakuho, her life at low ebb and fading fast._

***

The once-formidable power of Orochimaru had declined drastically. There was a time when his reach had extended all across the shinobi world, into every country and each hidden village. His hideouts had been strongholds, guarded by the freakish products of his research and inaccessible to outsiders. But the lakeside building looked abandoned, stained and crumbling from the effects of weather and time. No guards challenged their approach; they were able to enter the squat gray structure via doors that hung open on rusted hinges.

It was too easy.

"Do you see anyone?" asked Sakura again.

"No," said Neji. He could not prevent a certain amount of irritation from entering his voice. "I told you, I will let you know as soon as I detect anything." He was using his Byakugan to scout ahead, scanning down dank hallways and through cement walls for signs of a laboratory or the sight of Kabuto and Benihiko. So far, nothing.

"Then, which way should we go?" wondered Sakura. A gap in the wall led to another corridor, branching off to the right. She halted and peered down the dark hallway, which looked nearly identical to the one they were currently in – dirty white walls punctuated by empty doorways. It reminded her of an abandoned hospital, or a school.

Neji stopped too, looked after her. Still nothing. He thought a moment.

"The most protected part of this building," he said, "is the lower levels. That is the most likely location of a hidden laboratory. We should try to go down."

"Do you see stairs anywhere?"

"That way." He pointed straight ahead. "At the end of the hall, to the left." He set off in that direction, Sakura close behind. Their footsteps were a staccato echo off the cold tile floor.

"Can you see Lee and Shino at all?"

He shook his head. "No. This building has some strange properties – I can see perfectly for a radius of about thirty meters, but outside of that everything goes blurry. It's as if the walls are absorbing my Byakugan."

Shino had split their team into two parties. Neji's task was to lead Sakura to Benihiko and then keep Kabuto occupied while she effected a rescue. Meanwhile, Lee and Shino would try to create a diversion to draw out Kabuto's remaining protectors, if any. It was a good strategy, except that it relied on Neji's ability to find Kabuto and Benihiko, which seemed questionable at the moment.

They reached the end of the hallway and stepped left through an archway, beyond which was a flight of stairs. They descended to a small landing, where they turned around to follow the staircase further downward.

There were no more stairs, just another archway. They halted in surprise and exchanged a look.

Eventually Sakura shrugged. "Might as well go on through," she said.

They did so, and waiting for them on the other side was a long dark hallway with dirty white walls and a cold tile floor, off of which opened numerous nondescript black doorways. In silence they walked forward a few paces, and then to the right an opening gaped, revealing the long stretch of an identical corridor.

"Were … were we just here?" asked Sakura uncertainly. "It looks like the floor we just left."

"Well it can't be the same," said Neji impatiently. "The layout just happens to be similar, that's all."

"Then … are there more stairs at the end of the hallway? Can we go down another level?"

He looked down the empty corridor. His brows knit and he frowned.

"What? What is it?"

"There _are_ stairs down there, but as far as I can see, they only go up."

"How can that be? The stairs we just came down end here, and there _has _to be some way to access the lower levels."

"Maybe down the other hallway …" Neji turned on his heel to stare down the corridor on their right. At its end he saw another set of stairs, leading up but not down.

"Well?"

"I don't understand this – the stairs in that direction also only go up."

"Could we already be on the bottom floor?"

Neji looked down at his feet. "No. I can see at least one level below us. It looks …just like this one."

"How are we supposed to get there – through the floor?"

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps."

It had just been a throwaway comment, a bit of sarcasm born of frustration. She hadn't meant for him to take it seriously. "I _could_ punch a hole in the floor," she admitted. "But that would make a lot of racket, and we're supposed to avoid combat if possible. Too much noise will spoil Shino and Lee's diversion."

Neji scowled. His impatience was intensifying with every second; he could not forget what Kabuto had said over the radio. While they wandered aimlessly through these labyrinthine corridors Benihiko was dying.

His dissatisfaction was not lost on Sakura. "Neji," she said, "it's not that I'm unwilling to do it. I'm just not convinced that approach would actually get us anywhere. Didn't you say the floor below looks like this one?"

After a second he nodded curtly.

"Well then," she continued, "this feels to me like a trap, or a puzzle. This building was made to repel invaders, but there must be some secret to it. We need to figure out what that secret is, not go putting holes in the floor without a plan."

Neji didn't like puzzles. To him they seemed like a waste of time. "How do you propose we go about uncovering this secret?" he demanded. "All of the rooms we've passed were empty, and I'm not even sure I can find our way back to the entrance. We have no clues or way of knowing where we are."

Sakura bit her lip. "I'm in as big a hurry as you are, but it seems to me that the obvious place to look is in all of these empty rooms. You've already said this building has some sort of weird effect on your Byakugan, so maybe you missed something. Maybe they aren't as empty as you think."

Neji looked down the long row of black doorways. "If we end up having to search them all," he said, "by the time we find something, Benihiko will be dead and Kabuto will be long gone."

"I agree," she sighed, "but what else can we do?"

He didn't say anything to that. He drew a _kunai_ and strode toward the nearest doorway, stopping to inscribe a large X on the lintel before he went in.

"So we don't search the same room twice," he explained. Then he went inside. Who knew, maybe they would get lucky and find something right away. That was what they had to hope for, anyway – they had no other choice.

***

Lee couldn't decide how he felt about Shino's division of labor. On the one hand, acting as a diversion gave him an excellent chance of meeting with combat, which suited him perfectly. On the other hand, it was unlikely he would engage Kabuto himself, and Lee was eager to test his skills against those of the missing-nin, whom Gai had said was the equal of Kakashi.

"Shino-kun, do you think Kabuto himself will come to meet us?" The bug tamer was walking beside him through the dingy corridor, seeming to have no trouble finding his way in spite of the combination of dark sunglasses and poor lighting. Lee kept squinting into the darkness, trying to see if there were any insects hovering in front of Shino's face, guiding him.

"It is unlikely," replied Shino, his voice issuing from deep within his hooded jacket. "He knows we are coming, and will likely elect to remain with Benihiko to protect his research. But I feel certain that the pair of shinobi we defeated outside were not his only followers, so our goal must be to deal with Kabuto's remaining subordinates."

"If they are anything like those wind-users, then we should be able to defeat them quickly and join Neji-kun against Kabuto!"

Shino halted and turned toward Lee, his regard palpable even though his eyes could not be seen. "It is unwise to underestimate your opponents," he warned. "The wind-users were easily defeated because of their unfamiliarity with the weapons they were using, and we cannot assume we will be so fortunate a second time. We must focus on the task before us, and trust Neji and Sakura to do the same. That is what it means to work as a team."

Lee felt chagrinned. He knew all this, for Gai had constantly warned him against pride, against allowing his desire to prove himself to detract from the mission. And of course he believed in his comrades.

"Then … should we begin trying to attract attention now, Shino-kun?"

"Yes, I think so." Shino paused for a second. "I must admit that you are better suited for this than I am, Lee. We will have to … make some noise."

Lee smiled widely, teeth brilliantly white in the dimness. "You can count on me, Shino-kun!" He faced down the long hallway, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, "WE ARE HERE, KABUTO! WE HAVE COME TO TAKE BACK WHAT YOU STOLE, AND YOU CANNOT STOP US!"

Shino had backed up a few paces and placed his hands against the sides of his hood, about where his ears should be. "That's … very good Lee," he said as the shout's echoes reverberated through the building. "As for me, I suppose I should also try to attract some attention."

Bugs began to issue from his sleeves and hood, a dense black cloud against the gray shadows. They fanned out to coat both walls and the ceiling, and soon a noise like the whine of a thousand tiny saws could just barely be heard, at a pitch so high it verged on inaudibility. Beneath that there was a definite crunching sound.

Overhead, chunks of the ceiling began to rain down, shattering against the tile floor. Pieces of the wall detached themselves from the surrounding concrete and worked their way outward, until they too fell down with a crash. As more and more chunks were sawed from the walls and ceiling, the rectangular cross-section of the hallway began to sag dangerously.

"We'd better move down," said Shino calmly. "This section of the hallway is about to cave in."

As soon as they cleared the area there came an ominous groan, and then with a roar the walls and ceiling finally gave out, collapsing into a dusty heap of rubble that blocked the way back. It took a long time for the sound of the cave-in to fade, and then out of the pile of shattered concrete the insects rose in a thrumming roiling mass that spread down to the next section of corridor and began the whole process again.

"They'll have to respond to this," said Shino with satisfaction, "or else see their hideout fall down around them."

Lee had watched it all in awe. His only talent was in _taijutsu_, a limitation he had chosen to embrace instead of lament. But that did not mean that he could not appreciate the skill of his _ninjutsu_ and _genjutsu_-using companions, who were capable of a subtlety that was beyond him. From the very first time he had ever seen Shino in combat, way back during the _chuunin_ exams, he had been impressed by the flexibility of his unusual jutsu, and over the course of this mission that admiration had only grown. Not for the first time, Lee found himself observing a comrade's technique and thinking _I wish I could do that_.

"Lee," said Shino, "why have you stopped calling to them? We haven't been met by anyone yet – we have to keep making noise until we draw out this building's defenders."

"Yes!" said Lee, straightening up and tearing his eyes away from where the bugs were now ripping more chunks out of the concrete. Envy was an unworthy emotion, unyouthful; better to focus on his own hard-won abilities and the ways he might use them to benefit his team.

"KABUTO!" he bellowed again, "THIS IS THE HANDSOME DEVIL OF THE LEAF VILLAGE, ROCK LEE! I AM GOING TO FIND YOU AND DEFEAT YOU!"

He kept calling out challenges in this vein, while Shino's bugs kept toppling sections of the hallway. Between the two of them, there could hardly be anyone in the whole building who didn't know they had come. But still no challenger appeared, until Lee had grown hoarse and begun to worry about what would happen when the bugs ran out of hallway to chew on.

Then, in the shifting dust and gloomy shadows, something moved. It came toward them and resolved itself into a figure, tall and slim.

"Shino-kun –!"

"I see him."

"_'Him_?'" A woman's voice carried down the hall, over the crunch and whine of the bugs. "How insulting. I always thought I had a very feminine figure."

Abruptly the sound of the bugs' efforts ceased, as Shino recalled them in preparation for combat. Lee took a few steps forward, trying to get a better look at their opponent, assess her capabilities. She raised her arms.

Like the flipping of a switch, everything went dark.

***

He regained consciousness slowly, fighting his way up through layers of pain and confusion until he became aware that he was lying flat on his back in a small white room. There was a window to the right; pale light filtered in through slatted blinds. There were several small sounds, beepings and clickings that issued from arcane pieces of equipment connected to him and to each other via various tubes and wires. After a moment's mental effort, Lee realized where he must be.

The hospital.

Lying helpless in a hospital bed was a familiar sensation for him, for he had spent some of the worst days of his life in exactly this position. That time, he had believed that his life as a ninja was over. Looking to the left he saw that now, as then, Gai was at his side.

His sensei was snoozing in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair, arms and legs flung out carelessly, snoring percussively. Probably it had been the snoring that woke Lee up.

"Gai-sensei …" said Lee softly, not sure whether he should disturb his mentor or not. He couldn't remember anything after sighting the enemy through the gloom, but clearly he had been injured and taken back to Konoha. He wondered how the others had fared, and if the mission had been successful.

He wondered how severe his injuries were.

Gai had heard him, and with a jerk he opened his eyes and sat up in his chair. "Lee! You're awake!"

"Yes, Gai-sensei."

"How do you feel?"

Lee considered. He was familiar with pain in all its various forms, from the minor aches of training to the burning agony of debilitating injury. Now, the only sensation of note was a slight throbbing on his forehead, hardly worth mentioning.

"I feel good," he said in puzzlement. "But how can that be? What happened?"

Gai was studying him closely, his brow wrinkled and his bushy eyebrows contracted. "Good, you say? Well, I didn't believe them when they told me, but now I see for myself that it's true."

"What do you mean, sensei?"

Gai folded his arms and sat back. "When they told me that your mission had ended in failure and everyone had been seriously injured except for you, I didn't think it could be true. I told them that if anyone could be expected to go all-out to defend his comrades, it was Rock Lee."

"The mission failed? The others were injured? But _how_, Gai-sensei? I don't remember anything!" Lee sat up and clenched his fists, searching Gai's face for answers. But Gai's expression was closed in a way he had never seen before.

"You were knocked out," said Gai flatly. "According to Shino Aburame, your enemy used _genjutsu_ to confuse you into running headlong into a wall. Shino managed to defeat her, but was nearly killed in combat with Kabuto."

Lee felt a heavy ball of shame settle into his gut. _Tricked into running into a wall? _

"What about Neji and Sakura? Are they all right?"

Gai breathed out through his nostrils. "Neji is recovering now. Sakura is still in surgery."

Sakura in surgery? Then she must have been hurt very badly indeed. Lee had once sworn to protect her, and now he had broken his vow. His feeling of shame doubled.

"And Benihiko? How is she?"

"She's dead. Kabuto took her corpse for his experiments."

Lee was silent as the magnitude of his failure hit him. Comrades injured, mission failed, hostage dead. He didn't know what to say.

Gai was still watching him. "Lee," he began, and Lee looked up, knowing that if anyone could comfort him it was his teacher, "it's useless to blame yourself. You failed, and nothing will change that now."

Harsh words, but true. Gai never had been one for coddling his pupils; he believed in using the grim truths of the world as motivation to train. "I understand, sensei. I will work even harder to made sure nothing like this will ever happen again!" Lee's eyes went misty as he made his vow, and he threw off the thin blanket covering him, intending to get out of bed and start training immediately.

Gai reached out and restrained Lee with a hand on his chest. "No, Lee, that's not why I came here. Training isn't the answer to everything."

Lee's mouth fell open. He would never have thought to hear Gai admit there was something training and effort couldn't fix. "But then, what should I do, Gai-sensei?"

Gai folded his arms again and closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, they were hard and merciless. "You failed because of your inability to stand against _genjutsu_," he said. "You were a liability to your team – if they had brought someone else, perhaps that person's presence would have made the difference. I always thought I could make you into a splendid ninja using only _taijutsu_, but at last I believe what everyone told me: that goal is impossible. It was folly to even try it, and now a woman is dead and the village is at risk. You ask me what you should do, and this is my answer: Resign now before you endanger anyone else. Your goal is not more important than this village or its people."

Lee couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. In the midst of ridicule from without and crippling doubt from within, there had always been Gai, his unshakeable faith a constant source of strength. He remembered the day Gai vowed to help him become a splendid ninja, assuring him it was possible with enough effort. He had been losing hope, but that promise had been enough to restore it. He remembered when Gai advised him to have risky surgery and offered to die beside him, and Lee had realized that his _nindo_, his ninja way, was not something he was going to have to walk alone. He remembered the day he made _chuunin_, and Gai's proud smile was the best accolade in the world.

He loved Gai like a father, and now this man was telling him to give up his only dream.

"Sensei …" he whispered, tears spilling from his eyes onto his cheeks, "I am sorry. I will do anything you ask, if you will only help me to become stronger. _Please_, sensei, help me become a shinobi this village can rely on!" He was begging now and he didn't care. Dignity meant nothing without Gai.

Gai shook his head implacably. "Lee, you have already done more than anyone could have expected of you. You've amazed even me. The problem is not your work ethic or your attitude, it is your ability. Continuing would be dangerous to you, and I see now that it would be dangerous to everyone else, too. I have cared for you like my own son, but my first loyalty is always to this village. If I have to choose between you, I choose Konoha."

Lee was gasping for breath, hyperventilating. It felt like he was drowning, dark waters closing over his head, cutting him off from light and air. "Sensei, you once said that we are alike, that neither of us can live without our _nindo_. If that's true, and I quit my ninja way now, how am I supposed to live?"

Gai, who feared nothing, looked down and would not meet his eyes. "I don't know," his teacher said. "We _are_ alike, and in your position I don't know what I would do. I don't think I could live at all. But maybe you'll turn out to be more resilient than me. In any case, as hard as it might be for both of us, I can no longer in good conscience continue as your teacher. I will take my leave of you now. Goodbye, Lee."

So saying, Gai got heavily to his feet. He was still avoiding the boy's gaze, keeping his eyes cast firmly downward. Tears dripped from his ruddy face onto the floor. He reached out and briefly squeezed his former pupil's shoulder, then turned and stepped swiftly out of the room.

Lee was left alone in more ways than one.

***

He was at the training ground when she found him, sitting cross-legged against one of the target posts. This place was more familiar to him than his own room. Certainly he had spent more time here.

Over there, underneath that tree, he had challenged Neji and been defeated yet again. Over there, on that rock, Gai had told him that all of his effort would only pay off if he believed in himself. Behind his head was a shallow indentation left in the wood of the post by Lee's foot, and underneath him, on the very spot where he now sat, Gai had stood and called him a "genius of hard work." Lee was surrounded by reminders of his ninja career, and right now every one of them hurt him.

He turned his head to look at her when she entered the clearing, rustling the underbrush as she came.

"Tenten-san," he said quietly. "You have returned from your mission?"

It was late morning and the birds were singing, and in the sunshine she looked fresh and clean, her blouse starkly white against the green foliage. Even though they were in the village and off duty, she wore the cloth pack and giant scroll containing her weapons. Gai had taught them always to be ready for action.

"Yes," she replied, "I got back yesterday, but you were still in the hospital."

"I see. Did your mission go well?"

She advanced to stand a meter or so in front of him. "Yes. It was easier than I expected, as a matter of fact. But I heard that yours did not go so well."

He nodded. "That is an understatement, I am afraid. Benihiko is dead, and Neji and Sakura are in the hospital."

Tenten dropped into a crouch facing him. "Yes, that's what I heard," she said simply. "But I was just at the hospital looking for you, and it seems Sakura is out of surgery now. I didn't stay for the details, but one of the medics said it had gone well."

The tension in Lee's chest loosened, just a little. "That is good to know. Thank you."

She was still staring at him expectantly. "Well?" she demanded.

He frowned in confusion. "I do not understand, Tenten-san."

She sighed and scowled. "Well, aren't you going to go over to the hospital to see her? I imagine she'll be awake soon, and you'll be able to talk to her."

He looked down at his hands, clenched together in his lap. "No," he answered, "I do not think I should visit her. It is my fault that she is in this condition."

Tenten scowled deeper, nonplussed. "How is it more your fault than anyone else's – hers, for example?"

"I was knocked out by a _genjutsu_ before I could be of help to anyone. The others – Sakura, Neji, Shino – had to fight without me." He was relieved to hear his voice remain steady as he said it.

"Well, that's too bad," she said after a moment. "But I'm sure no one blames you – these things happen."

"Gai-sensei blames me," he said softly.

"What?"

"H-he said that my inability to handle _genjutsu_ made me a liability to the team. He said that if I continue being a ninja, I will endanger more lives. He resigned as my teacher and told me to quit."

Tenten sucked in a breath and her eyes widened. "_Gai_ said this?" she asked in disbelief. "Are you sure it wasn't a hallucination? You _were_ hit on the head."

"I am sure."

She thought a while. "Well, Gai says a lot of things," she said finally. "Most of them are crazy, I'm always telling you that. He was probably just upset over everyone's injuries."

Lee shook his head slowly from side to side. "No, he was not crazy. He made perfect sense. He said that he had to put the good of the village ahead of everything, including me. He said nothing is more important than Konoha."

"That's true of course."

"Then you agree, Tenten-san, that I should quit?"

She dropped from her crouch to sit on the ground, chin propped up in her hand. She considered the question. "Lee," she began eventually, "do you remember when Tsunade-sama first came to the village?"

"Yes. You were excited, because she was your idol."

"That's right. I went to see her that first day, and she was everything I imagined – beautiful and powerful, standing above us all in her Hokage robes."

"She is impressive." He could not see where this was going.

"Do you know what she said to me about my jutsu?"

His eyebrows shot up. She had never mentioned anything about this before – had Tsunade insulted her?

"No. What did she say?"

Tenten paused. "Nothing," she said at last. "Tsunade never said anything to me about my jutsu or my training. Every time I stood before her I waited for her to acknowledge me, but she never did. Even now, I doubt she would remember my name. And for an apprentice she took on Sakura; I'll bet she never even considered me."

That Tenten might have been injured by Tsunade's choice in students had never even crossed his mind. She had never let on that it bothered her.

"But … Tsunade-sama is a medical ninja. Probably she wanted an apprentice who was interested in that. I am sure it had nothing to do with your skills."

Tenten made an abrupt motion like she was swatting a fly. "Tsunade is much more than a medical expert, Lee. She's a _sannin_ – do you really think she'd have nothing to teach a weapons expert? Anyway, I didn't tell you that so you could reassure me. I'm over it now."

"How did you do that?" He knew first hand how much strength it took to overcome self-doubt, and it seemed his teammate had done it alone.

She stared at him intensely. "I grew up. Whether I train or don't train, whether I fight or don't fight, is up to me. I don't need anybody else to tell me what I'm worth. I'm not a child anymore, Lee; I choose my own path."

It was so simple, but so hard. Understanding hit him like a blow. In a flash he was on his feet. "Tenten-san, do you know where Gai-sensei is?"

She was looking up at him in alarm, taken aback by the effect of her words. "I saw him when I was coming to find you. He was outside the ramen shop challenging Kakashi."

"Thank you, Tenten-san! You have been a tremendous help to me!" Then he took off running, a green blur quickly lost among the trees.

As expected, Gai was still where Tenten had left him. Challenges with Kakashi were often time-consuming, except when Kakashi got to name the challenge himself and picked something like rock-scissors-paper. Gai was on the ground doing one-armed push-ups and counting in a carrying voice. Stacked on his back to make the task harder were what appeared to be giant iron cooking pots, probably from the ramen shop.

Lee pushed through the crowd that had gathered around Gai. They were shaking their heads in disbelief. A few were snickering. Kakashi was leaned up against the side of the restaurant reading his smutty novel.

"Two hundred thirty-five, two hundred thirty-six," Gai counted, pushing himself up and down laboriously. He was sweating and shaking, but there was a grim smile on his face.

"Gai-sensei!" called Lee. "I want to talk to you!"

Gai finished his two hundred and thirty-seventh push-up and paused to look up at Lee. His smile faded.

"I've already said everything that needs to be said, Lee. I won't change my mind." His voice was harsh from exertion.

"Yes, but I have not said everything I wish to say, sensei! Please allow me to speak!"

Gai shifted his position slightly, causing the stacked pots to clang together and teeter precariously. He looked confused.

"I suppose I owe it to you to at least hear you out," said the _jounin_ finally. "It's partly my fault you ever believed you could become a ninja, after all." Over by the shop, Kakashi's eye had flicked up from the pages of his book to watch the exchange.

"Yes sir, thank you! I have come to say that you are right – you should not be my teacher any longer! Since my graduation from the Academy I have depended on you. I have depended on you too much. Now I must stand alone. Even if you do not believe in me anymore, I believe in myself, and that is enough. That is the final lesson I will learn from you, sir – how to go on alone!"

The noise from the crowd subsided while Lee spoke. His voice grew stronger as he went on, and he could swear he felt himself growing taller by the second. He had thought that he and Gai were meant to walk his _nindo_ together, but now he saw clearly that that was impossible, that his ninja way could only be traveled alone. For a time Gai had guided him, but that was at an end. It was time to declare his independence.

He felt ready to do it. Somehow, in the back of his mind, he had been preparing for this for some time. His own strength and self-confidence welled up within him. He had fallen but he would get up; his goal was attainable and he _would_ reach it.

Gai was staring at him, at a loss for words. Kakashi's one visible eye was widened in shock. The crowd remained silent.

Then something odd happened.

The scene seemed to freeze. Just for an instant, the fluffy white clouds scudding overhead halted their lazy progress across the sky, the birds froze in midair, and people's chests ceased to rise and fall with their breathing. It was like the skipping of a poorly cut film reel, a blip in reality.

_That's impossible_, thought Lee.

As quickly as it came it was over; everything resumed its normal activity as though nothing unusual had happened.

"What was that?" Lee demanded, staring hard at his teacher.

"What are you talking about?" Gai replied. "I didn't notice anything. What about you, Kakashi?"

Kakashi shook his head. "No, I didn't see anything either. You're just exhausted from the mission, Lee. You need to rest."

At that moment, Ino Yamanaka emerged through the crowd, breathing hard. Her normally sleek blond hair was disheveled and her eyes were puffy and red. "Kakashi-sensei!" she cried. "I've just come from the hospital to tell you – Sakura is dead!"

Kakshi dropped his book. With a clang the iron pots fell from Gai's back as he sprang to his feet.

"Liar," said Lee calmly.

Ino turned her blue eyes in his direction.

"How can you say that? Sakura died because of you, Lee, and now you're making light of the whole thing!"

Lee folded his arms. "Tenten told me Sakura was getting better. I do not believe that the situation could have changed so quickly. And then there is the matter of that strange pause just now. People do not recover and then die in the space of a few minutes, and flying birds do not just freeze in place. Not in the real world, anyway. The only place something like that could happen is in a _genjutsu_!"

Everything froze again, and Ino's face blurred and melted. Presently it took on a new form, one with angular features and bottomless black eyes. "Very good," she said, in a voice that wasn't Ino's – it was huskier and tinged with malice.

"Who are you?" Lee demanded.

The woman, who had grown taller and slimmer, smiled dryly. "My name is not important. What is important is that I serve Kabuto-sama, and that I have you caught in a _genjutsu_."

"Not anymore," Lee replied. "I have uncovered the illusion."

She shrugged. Her hair color had darkened to a rich auburn. "I have to admit, you were harder to deceive than I expected. Ordinarily I can tap into the darkest parts of my opponents' minds without being found out, and immobilize them with fear and despair before they realize what's happened. A few have even killed themselves. The key to it all is subtlety, keeping the illusion close enough to real life to fool the victim."

"You did a poor job with me," Lee observed.

"Well, I sensed that your greatest fear was losing your dream. I thought I could simulate that by using your feelings for your teacher – if he no longer believed in you, I was sure you would lose hope. But it seems you have reserves of self-confidence even I couldn't touch. That part of your mind spoke to you through the image of your kunoichi teammate."

"You seem very calm about your failure."

She shrugged again. "You're still in my _genjutsu_, and your memories have told me that you do not have the ability to dispel it. I prefer the subtle approach, but that doesn't mean I'm incapable of more … direct methods." Gai, Kakashi, and the entire crowd vanished, leaving them alone on an empty street. Chains materialized around Lee's arms and legs, binding him firmly in place.

"This will hold you as securely as physical restraints," the woman said. "Kabuto-sama will have more than enough time to complete his work."

This was _genjutsu_ beyond anything Lee had ever heard of. Even Kurenai, the Leaf's own expert illusionist, could not deceive the senses this thoroughly, nor reach so deeply into her victims' minds. Sakura or Neji might have been able to dispel the illusion via _ninjutsu_, but of course that was impossible for Lee.

Like everything else, he had to go at it more directly. He began to concentrate, summoning all his remaining chakra.

His opponent could sense his efforts. "What are you doing?" she asked.

Lee had closed his eyes to focus, and now he opened them to stare her down as he cried, "First gate, gate of opening: Open!"

The first of his eight inner gates sprang open, releasing his body's natural limitations on the use of his muscles. He was now many times more powerful than a moment ago, and he wasn't done yet.

"Second gate, gate of healing: Open!" Now his stamina increased to match his greater power.

"Third gate, gate of life: Open!" This one turned his skin bright red.

"Fourth gate, gate of pain: Open!" His speed and power rose drastically, but the fourth gate was aptly named. As always, as it sprang open it caused a fiery agony to spread through his body. It felt like he was burning up from the inside.

The woman shrieked in discomfort. Ordinarily Lee would have proceeded to the next gate, the gate of limit, but in this case the fourth gate was his goal. Being incapable of using _ninjutsu_ to escape the illusion, his only other option was to take back control of his senses through the application of pain. The fourth gate accomplished that nicely.

Power surged through his body and mind, making his perceptions increasingly difficult to manipulate. Try as she might, his enemy could not overcome the reality of his pain, and her _genjutsu_ shattered into a thousand pieces like shards of glass.

They were in a dim hallway, dust in the air and rubble behind them. Shino was sprawled out on the floor, his bugs nowhere in sight. Lee had also been lying down, and as he climbed to his feet he saw his opponent a few meters away, supporting herself with one hand against the wall.

"You … you broke it!" she gasped. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, and she was shaking from exertion.

Lee didn't wait. Bright red, power coursing through him, he felt a terrible anger at the experience she had put him through. Almost, she had destroyed his spirit. In a few strides he closed the gap between them.

She never had a chance. Gifted though she was at _genjutsu_, it seemed her physical skills were severely lacking. With one punch he sent her flying, and she was dead before she hit the ground.

Elsewhere in the building, Neji and Sakura suddenly found themselves staring down a staircase that wound down for several levels, and Neji's Byakugan could now discern a laboratory below, in which waited a pair of figures. One of them, with two mismatched kinds of chakra, was clearly Kabuto. The other, whose chakra was so low it was nearly invisible, had to be Benihiko. In killing the _genjutsu_-using kunoichi, Lee had also broken the Moebius-strip illusion she had cast over his comrades. Nothing now stood between Shino's team and their goal.


	7. On the Verge of Collapse

_On the Verge of Collapse_

The stairs they descended now were genuine, leading all the way to the lowermost level. Neji hurried downward, Sakura at his side. She seemed unable to get over their latest humiliation.

"A _genjutsu_!" she spat. "I should have known! Kakashi-sensei told me before we left that the abductors included an incredibly talented caster of _genjutsu._" Her hands, encased in black leather gloves, were both clenched in fists; she seemed liable to punch the wall.

"It was well done," he said mildly, to mollify her. "Confusing, but not so different from reality that it was immediately obvious we were in an illusion. Designed to force us to waste time."

"Well, it worked." Then she fell momentarily silent as a new thought occurred to her. "Do you suppose the _genjutsu _user was who Lee and Shino went up against? Are they the reason the illusion disappeared?"

Neji halted. "You can ask them yourself," he said. "They're coming down these stairs right now." He hadn't finished speaking when quiet voices could be heard echoing off the dingy walls.

"Lee! Shino!" said Sakura as the pair finally came into sight. "Are you all right?" Lee was sweaty and panting, supporting a somewhat limp and feeble Shino.

"Sakura-san! We are all right!" said Lee. He gave her a thumbs-up.

"Lee," said Neji, "what happened? You look as if you've opened some of the gates." He knew his teammate well enough to recognize the signs.

"It was _genjutsu_." Shino spoke from the depths of his coat. "But _genjutsu_ of a level I've never seen before, and I was a student of Kurenai. Illusions almost never work against my insects, but the woman we faced managed to simultaneously deceive me, Lee, and every single bug in that corridor. It would have required the casting of thousands of illusions at once."

"We were also caught in her _genjutsu_," Sakura informed them. "It kept us walking in circles. How did you finally defeat her?"

"I didn't. She killed nearly all of my bugs and was about to kill me. The one who defeated her was Lee."

"It was … Lee?" Neji was stunned, for his teammate was not supposed to have any skill with _genjutsu_ or _ninjutsu_.

"That is right! In the end, it was just a matter of believing in myself!" Lee gave a toothy smile that practically glowed in the dark.

"But how—" Sakura began, before being cut off by Shino.

"There will be time for explanations later. But we still have a job to do. Lee and I came after you, Neji, because we assumed you know where Benihiko is. Is that correct?"

"Yes. She is with Kabuto in a laboratory of some kind at the bottom of these stairs."

"What is her condition?"

"Her chakra reserves are low, as is her blood supply. I am no medic, but I would say she has very little time left."

"I see. Then we'll have to move at once. Unfortunately, with most of my bugs dead, I won't be of much use to you, and Lee here has already used up a great deal of his chakra. It will be mainly up to you, Neji, to engage Kabuto in combat. And while Neji's doing that, Sakura, your job will be to find, rescue, and treat Benihiko. Additionally, you are to destroy any research materials that you run across relating to the blood-sculpting art. Is that understood?"

Neji nodded. Beside him, Sakura squared her shoulders and did the same.

"Good," said Shino. "Lee and I will look for a chance to assist you when we can. Let's go."

They resumed the descent, now a squad of four.

At the bottom of the stairs was a set of rotting wooden doors; Neji signaled his teammates to be quiet as he reached up to push one open slightly.

"There's no need to bother with stealth," called a voice from within. "I already know you're here."

Neji threw the doors open and burst through, followed quickly by Sakura, then Lee and Shino. Before them was another short length of corridor, made of damp dark stone, ending in an archway that marked the entrance to Kabuto's lab. The laboratory was wet and foul, with only the occasional lamp to cast a pool of wan light. In one of these pools was a metal cot, and Benihiko was sprawled across it like a sailor on the wreckage of his ship.

Kabuto stood beside her, looking out at them. He smiled. "Sakura," he greeted her. "It's been a long time. How are you?"

"Bastard," she said clearly. "Who are you, anyway? Kabuto or Orochimaru?"

He appeared to think about the question as the light played on his disjoint features. "Maybe both," he said finally. "Maybe neither. It doesn't really matter though, does it? Whoever I am, I'm far stronger than you. As for your companions"—his eyes shifted to Neji, Lee, and Shino in turn—"I might recognize a few of them, though their names escape me." His gaze returned to linger on Neji. "But you there, with the white eyes. You're a Hyuuga, aren't you?"

"That's right."

"Ah, the Byakugan," continued Kabuto almost nostalgically, "yet another _kekkei genkai_ I intend to obtain eventually. Inferior to the Sharingan, of course, but there's no reason not to have the pair."

"Either technique is useless to a dead man, which is what you'll be unless you return Benihiko," said Neji coldly. He meant it, too – the Hokage had said it wasn't necessary to kill Kabuto, but in his estimation the man needed to die.

"I've already told you, I'm keeping this corpse." Kabuto reached out to prod the body on the cot. "It's getting cold."

"Neji," whispered Sakura, "is she –?"

He shook his head slightly. "No, she's alive. Barely. Go to her the instant I engage him."

"I can hear you!" called Kabuto. "It's true, I might have announced her death a little prematurely. If you think you can prevent it, then come and try!"

Neji didn't need any more encouragement. He sprinted up the corridor at top speed, already focusing chakra in his fingertips in preparation for a fatal blow to the heart. He saw his enemy smile, a strange lopsided sneer, and hold a single hand out in front of him. In the same instant as Neji drew even with the archway, Kabuto made a hand sign.

A blue field of chakra flared across Neji's vision, and his outstretched hand met something as impenetrable as a wall. The impact jarred him, threw him down on the dirty floor.

"Neji-san!" shouted Lee in alarm. "Are you all right?"

Neji grunted and picked himself up painfully, Kabuto's laughter ringing in his ears. "I'm fine, Lee," he called back. "It's just a barrier. It didn't harm me." Through his Byakugan the barrier was a diffuse blue curtain, like a sheet of gauze hanging from the ceiling. It emanated from a set of four white tags, rectangular and covered in arcane writing, that were attached at strategic points along the arch. Evidently Kabuto had prepared them in advance and activated them at the last second.

"Another time, Hyuuga," said Kabuto in amusement. "And when we meet again, I'll have this woman's jutsu at my disposal. But for now, I really have to be going." He made another hand sign, and through the barrier Neji saw more tags within the laboratory activate suddenly. They were of an entirely different nature from the first four.

"Get down!" Neji cried, diving for the ground. Then the world exploded.

The paper bombs were unique and precise, each custom-designed to give off an explosion of a particular shape. They worked together to rip the old building apart, not haphazardly but with the goal of blasting a hole up from the basement, through the floors above, and out the rotting roof. White light flashed, masonry groaned and shrieked, and when the noise died down at last the formerly musty space was flooded with pale moonlight and chill night air.

Cautiously, Neji uncovered his head, marveling that he was still alive. Evidently the same design that had preserved the interior of the laboratory had spared this corridor. Had they been anywhere else in the building, though, they would not have been so lucky; he saw that whole sections of it were now giving way.

"Sakura! Lee! Shino!" he called, wondering about his teammates, who had been standing farther back from the lab.

Through the settling dust he heard the sounds of movement, and then Lee answered him, "We are here, Neji-san!" He focused his Byakugan in the direction of Lee's voice and discerned three figures, two of them very low on chakra, making their way toward him.

"A meter farther back," said Sakura shakily as they appeared at Neji's side, "and we would all be dead. The stairwell's collapsed."

"Explosions are fascinating, don't you think?" Kabuto was still standing beside Benihiko; he hadn't moved at all during the chaos. "It seems in using the blast to create my own exit, I also eliminated yours. You can't go back, you can't go forward, and I think this building's current condition makes staying in place inadvisable." Both halves of his smile twisted malevolently.

A small amount of debris rained down from the ceiling, lending support to Kabuto's claim.

"The one who won't be leaving here is you!" Sakura shouted. She lunged toward the archway, pulling back a chakra-laden fist.

Neji caught her arm before she could strike. He yanked her backward. "Don't! This whole building is falling down around us. If you break down that arch, you'll bring what's left of it down on our heads!" She looked at him wide-eyed, realizing the mistake she'd nearly made. She nodded and relaxed, and he released her.

Kabuto was laughing again, in his serpentine way. "It's quite a conundrum, isn't it? Let's hope you live long enough to come up with a solution."

"This is bad!" said Sakura. "He's going to take her! What do we do?"

Neji was wondering the same thing, scanning their surroundings, the barrier, the laboratory, searching for an advantage. His eyes focused behind Kabuto, where he found one.

"The life you should be most worried about is your own," he called to their enemy. "Even if you leave here alive, you don't have much time left. You're being consumed from within; I can already see Orochimaru's chakra encroaching on yours. It's reached your spine now, and it's gaining."

Kabuto's eyebrows contracted as he tried to work out Neji's intention with that last comment; he knew it wouldn't be genuine concern for his wellbeing. In the few seconds he spent doing that he neglected his awareness of the space behind him, so that he didn't see the pale arm shaking as it raised a bloody scalpel above his head.

"Blood of my mothers," Benihiko rasped, "be my sword!"

A flash and the scalpel was encased in purple, and then she stabbed at Kabuto, hitting him in the spot Neji had identified for her, the spine, and dragging the blade downward.

Kabuto howled and reared back; he whirled and backhanded Benihiko, and she tumbled from the cot and fell to the ground. He could have finished her then, easily, or else just snatched her up and run, but she had wounded him too deeply. She'd stabbed him on the border between his two competing chakras, at the place where Kabuto morphed into Orochimaru and vice-versa. It was a kind of chakra-vacuum, empty and possessed by neither identity, and Benihiko's chakra and blood leaked from the blade embedded in his back, filling up the absence, infecting him.

He hunched over and howled in agony. He reached behind himself, grasping at the grip of the scalpel, struggling in vain to remove it. He hissed, spat oddly, and his arm transformed into a white scaly snake that extended outward to grasp the little knife in its jaws and finally pull it out. In those few seconds his face seemed also to have altered, becoming thinner and whiter.

The scalpel, violet color now gone, rang against the ground as Kabuto dropped it. His cries continued, though, for though the knife was gone, the pain was not. "Somehow," Neji observed, "she knew just where to stab you. I can see the injury now; her chakra is spreading down your spine. You'll die soon if you don't do something about it. You'd better not waste any time."

Kabuto looked at him through mismatched eyes. There was hatred there, coiled and poisonous. "Later," he threatened, and it came out more as a hiss than human speech. Then he seemed to tear apart, ripping into several large pieces that floated in the dusty air for an instant before dispersing like clouds in a gale.

"Is … is he gone?" asked Sakura hesitantly.

"Yes," said Neji. "I don't see any sign of him."

"That's good," said Shino. "But it doesn't change our current predicament. We're trapped, and this building won't stand much longer."

"But, Shino-san, we cannot go back – the stairwell is completely blocked!" Lee was half-turned, staring back over his shoulder at the rubble behind them.

"Then we'll just have to go forward," said Neji. "The barrier must come down."

"But, Neji-san, can you—?"

"No. The only way to take it down is by removing at least one of the tags."

"But they're on the other side of the barrier!" said Sakura.

"Yes," Neji replied simply. He raised his voice slightly, "Are you listening, Benihiko? You'll have to destroy one of the tags."

"I'm … here," she said faintly, crawling into sight from behind the cot. She looked awful – pale, hair disheveled, clad in an ill-fitting white garment that was stained with dirt and blood. She was cut and bruised, and most horribly of all, her right arm was missing. Neji couldn't bring himself to look at the raw red stump.

"You have to take out one of the tags," he said steadily, determined not to react visibly to her appearance. "I don't think peeling it up will work – you'll need to hit it with your jutsu."

"My … jutsu…" she echoed faintly, staring blankly at the floor.

"Quickly, Benihiko. This building's coming down."

She seemed not to hear him; her normally bright green eyes were dull and clouded. She was very far gone.

"I don't think she can do it, Neji-san," said Sakura in a hushed voice. "She's barely conscious. I'm going to try breaking down the arch – it's the only other choice."

Neji held an arm out in front of Sakura, restraining her. He was certain that inflicting any more damage on the building would be fatal to them all. "Benihiko!" he said sharply, "You have to do it now! If you don't, we'll all die, and there will be no one left to carry on Master Yakuho's legacy.'

Something flickered in her face, and she raised her head to meet his eyes. "Yakuho …" she said vaguely.

Neji nodded. "He's dead. Kabuto tortured and killed him. You are his heir, and all that remains of his name."

She continued to stare at him, and he thought the fog in her eyes lifted a little. Shaking, she slowly slid her left hand across the ground and pulled herself forward a little way. She did it again, and again, every movement constricted by pain, until she was within reach of the scalpel she had stuck into Kabuto. Her palm came down on top of it, and she resumed her halting progress across the floor, this time with the scalpel trapped beneath her hand. It scraped against the stone with each new burst of movement.

_Scrape!_ The hollow metallic sound rang out, bringing Benihiko a half-meter closer to the barrier. _Scrape!_ A meter. Her shaking had intensified, and her gaze was fixed on the nearest tag, set at waist-height on the arch, as though it was the only thing in the world. _Scrape!_ It seemed she would never reach it, and the building groaned and shook ominously.

"Benihiko-san!" Lee called, "You can do it! You are almost there!"

_Scrape!_ One more lunge, and she would be at the arch. _Scrape!_ At long last she was there, panting with exhaustion, body wracked by tremors. She shifted her weight backward and sat up, moaning a little with discomfort. Her left hand closed around the scalpel and raised it off the ground.

The blade was poised over her left leg, gleaming silver and red. Benihiko took in a great sobbing breath, then brought the scalpel down to lodge in the meat of her own thigh. Blood flowed, of course, but sluggishly and with less volume than expected.

"There's too little blood," Sakura murmured, staring at the wound. "She must have already lost so much …"

Benihiko winced and pulled the scalpel out. Given her _kekkei genkai_, the wound should have closed almost immediately, but it did not. Her eyes sought the tag again, and in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper she said, "Blood of my mothers … be my … sword."

Through his Byakugan Neji saw the chakra in her body, so faint it was nearly undetectable, and in the blood around the scalpel, condensing with the activation of her jutsu. As before a light flashed, but it was less brilliant this time, and in its aftermath the scalpel shone purple only spottily – she had not achieved full coverage. The luminous shell around the blade looked oddly liquid and flowing; as Neji watched, a small piece of it broke away and dripped on the floor as mere blood.

Benihiko was losing control. He doubted she would be capable of another attempt.

She seemed aware of it, too. She wasted no time in striking at the tag. The scalpel arced downward and hit its target, then fell from her hand to clatter off into the shadows.

For an awful instant it seemed as if nothing had happened. Sakura opened her mouth, probably to suggest breaking the arch again, but before she could speak the barrier flickered, sputtered, disappeared.

"That is it, let's go!" Lee cried. Neji was way ahead of him, charging into the laboratory with Sakura at his heels. Benihiko was slumped on the floor just beyond the arch. He reached her and crouched down for a look; she had fainted again and the damage looked much worse up close.

"We can't treat her here," said Shino as the building gave another sickening lurch. "It's too dangerous. We'll have to risk moving her."

"In a second," said Sakura brusquely. Her eyes flicked appraisingly over Benihiko's injuries. From her belt she removed a syringe, which she jabbed quickly into Benihiko's left bicep.

"What's that?" asked Neji.

"Hemoglobin shot," she replied. "Imbued with jutsu to spur the immediate production of blood and plasma cells. Blood loss is the biggest danger right now." Sakura reached down and lifted the other woman easily. She looked up, to where the moon was visible through the hole in the roof, then tensed her legs and sprang upward.

The others followed her, leaping as high as their chakra and muscles would permit. They rose up, landing on the crumbling remnants of higher levels before pushing off again, finally alighting on the roof. Outside it was night, still and clear, a soft wind sighing between the boulders and rippling the surface of the lake. They jumped off the roof onto the lakeshore, free at last with their rescued hostage in tow.

Whether Benihiko would make it back to the Leaf alive was another question, whose answer depended entirely on Sakura.


	8. Determination

_Determination_

Twelve hours later they were on the move again, hiking cautiously through the rocky terrain, alert for Stone-nin. Lee was carrying Benihiko, who was sedated and breathing shallowly.

Sakura had worked on the young woman all night, closing cuts and healing bruises, spurring the production of blood with more injections, replacing lost chakra with her own. The missing arm was by far the greatest challenge; the bloody stump was like an invitation to infection, yet she was hesitant to close it for fear of preventing Benihiko from sculpting a new arm in the future. In the end she had settled on a compromise, covering the wound with powerful antibiotics and then bandaging it tightly. Blood still seeped through the wrappings at a steady pace, and she could only work to make sure the rate of its replenishment was greater than the rate of its loss. The injections, combined with Benihiko's own natural resilience, would hopefully pull her through.

While she worked her companions had stood guard, though all indications were that Kabuto was long gone and they were alone. At some point during her ministrations there had come a deep dull vibration, and then the building beside the lake had collapsed in on itself, taking the body of the _genjutsu_-user and whatever remained of Kabuto's research along with it.

"Let's stop for now," she said. "I want to check on her again." The others obeyed her without question – all of them, even Shino, seemed content to defer to her now that their main challenge was medical.

They came to a halt and Lee gently lowered Benihiko to the ground, taking care to keep her right shoulder elevated as Sakura had instructed him. Sakura inspected the bandage. Sure enough, it needed changing again. At this rate she was going to run out of gauze.

"She's still bleeding?" asked Neji from behind her. He stood with his arms folded, watching impassively.

"Obviously," said Sakura with irritation. She was tired out from her work. Shino had made her rest after she finished treating Benihiko on the lakeshore, but she hadn't been able to sleep very long before she had to rise again and check on her patient. The others couldn't help her; she was the only one with the necessary skills.

"Can't you stop it?" he pressed her. "I can see that she's hardly replenished her blood supply since we rescued her; everything she produces keeps flowing right out of her arm."

Sakura finished tying the latest bandage and turned to glare at the _jounin_. His voice was flat and calm, yet she couldn't help but hear the implied criticism.

"I already told you," she said shortly, "that the only way to stop the bleeding entirely is to accelerate the growth of skin over the wound or cauterize it. Either option could prevent her from sculpting a new arm in the future."

Shino stepped over beside Neji. It was mid-morning, and his glasses reflected the cloudless blue sky. "Isn't it true that she sculpted the original after cutting off her real arm?" he asked.

"As far as we know," said Sakura. She recalled how the bone jutting out from Benihiko's stump was oddly smooth and even, as though it had been cut cleanly through in a single stroke.

"Then, if you close the wound on her stump, shouldn't she be able to make a new arm in the future by a similar process?"

Sakura blinked. "You mean, cut back the stump and use the blood flow?"

"Yes."

She looked back down at Benihiko. It was an awful thought. "I suppose," she said slowly, "that she'd be capable of it. It wouldn't be fundamentally different from how she made the arm in the first place. But it would be painful, even for her."

"Still," said Shino, "it can't be good for her to continue bleeding like this. And as long as she's this weak, we'll have to move slowly, which leaves us vulnerable to attack. Remember that Kabuto is still out here somewhere. I think you'd better close the wound so we can revive her and increase our pace."

Sakura scowled at him and didn't move.

"In the end," Shino continued calmly, "it's your decision as her physician. Just bear in mind the effect on her health if she's taken captive again."

That was an argument she couldn't ignore, and the volume of blood Benihiko was losing _did_ bother her. "All right," she said grudgingly, "I'll close the wound. I was about to run out of bandages anyway. But I'll need some water."

Shino reached into his jacket and withdrew a metal flask, full of water from the lake. Sakura accepted it, placed it on the ground, and made a few hand signs over it. The flask began to glow green, and the grass immediately around it withered and died.

"Medical ninjutsu?" Neji asked curiously.

"Purification," she responded. "That lake was filthy." Then she took out a scalpel and cut through the bandages she'd just applied. After just a few minutes they were already stained pink.

When they saw her cut the bandages away, all three of her comrades turned outward, ostensibly to scan the countryside for threats. Sakura knew the real reason, though – they were bothered by the sight of surgery. It had been the same way by the lake. Shino had crouched a little distance away and averted his eyes as he concentrated his chakra on accelerating his insects' development, Lee had jogged in widening circles around them, and Neji had paced endlessly back and forth at the water's edge, staring out over the mirrored surface. It annoyed her that men whose whole profession consisted of hurting others should be so cowardly in the face of injury; surely it was their responsibility to really understand the consequences of the jutsu they used. Even Neji, who regularly looked inside the human body, had been unable to face the ugly red meat below Benihiko's right shoulder.

There had been a time when Sakura had envied her male comrades' strength, their raw power as they inflicted heavy damage on one another. She knew now, though, that in important ways she was stronger than any of them. This incident only confirmed it.

Her hands glowed green, the color of life, and the ragged skin around Benihiko's wound turned from withered brown to healthy pink, then expanded, moving inexorably across the exposed muscle and bone. Benihiko's arm was severed rather high, and she was, or had been, a muscular woman, biceps swollen from her years of practice with the _naginata_ and her later career as a sculptor. Hence the area to be covered was quite large; any more and skin grafts might have been required. After about an hour it was done, and where before there had been a sickening wound there was now a smooth fleshy stump. More importantly, Benihko had stopped bleeding.

"I'm done," Sakura announced, wiping sweat from her brow. "Lee, that drained me of what little chakra I had left; do you think you could carry her again?"

"Of course, Sakura-san!" said Lee eagerly. He sprinted toward them – he'd been doing jumping jacks a few meters away – and carefully gathered Benihiko up in his arms. His eyes avoided her right arm.

_Even Lee_, she thought, who'd taken more injuries than anyone she knew. _Men can be such children._

"How long before you can safely awaken her?" asked Shino.

Sakura did some quick calculations. "About three hours," she replied. "The bleeding has finally stopped, but I don't want to wake her until she has enough chakra to keep up with us. Her circulatory and chakra networks are fused, so her blood and chakra come and go together. In three hours the injections will have given her enough blood to make it safe to revive her."

"Three hours it is, then," said Shino.

***

For Neji, the three hours before Benihiko could be revived passed slowly. They exited the Land of Earth and entered the Land of Fire, and gradually the landscape transitioned from rocky grasslands to thick forests. Among the trees they were able to travel faster, branch to branch, like Leaf-nin. He kept his Byakugan engaged the whole time, determined that Kabuto should not take them by surprise. Of course he couldn't make up for his original lapse, the one that had put them all in this situation, with extra vigilance now, but that wouldn't stop him from trying.

He wanted Benihiko to wake up mainly so he could be certain she was really all right. Her grievous injuries, the constant loss of blood, and the sickening way her right arm now ended just beneath her shoulder all filled him with guilt. He had thought retrieving Benihiko would ease his shame, but the sight of the ghastly consequences of his actions had the opposite effect. If she woke up and was herself again, he might finally find some relief.

When three hours were up it took all of his self-control not to call for a halt immediately; he didn't want to reveal to his comrades how agitated he was. It was his way to hide his emotions, and his impassive façade had rarely been so tested. Thankfully Sakura soon noticed the time and signaled the rest of them to stop.

"Well, it's been three hours," she said to Shino once they were all on the ground. "Do you still want me to revive her?"

"Yes, if she can handle it," Shino replied.

Again, Lee set Benihiko down. Even to Neji's inexpert eye she looked better. Her color was more vivid and her breathing deeper, and when he probed beneath the surface with his Byakugan he saw her levels of chakra and blood had increased drastically.

Sakura withdrew another vial from her belt and knelt to inject Benihiko, whose left arm was already covered in puncture marks from the medic's previous efforts. "It counteracts the sedative," Sakura explained. "I wouldn't give her anything as harsh as a stimulant yet. But it should be enough to wake her up." Neji wondered just how many different medicines and chemicals Sakura carried with her to the field. She always seemed to have exactly the right one.

Sakura withdrew the needle and stowed it away, and after a few heartbeats Benihiko's eyelids fluttered, then opened. She stared up at the medic for a moment, bemused. Then her eyes moved from Sakura's face to Neji's. Her expression darkened.

"_You_," she spat at him, a malediction.

So much for relief. He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement.

She started to move, struggling to sit up until Sakura reached behind her and assisted her. Once upright, she closed her eyes a moment, trying either to get her bearings or to assess her own condition. Suddenly her eyes flew open and her left arm groped toward her right sleeve.

"My arm!" she gasped. "It's been closed up!"

"I had to," said Sakura apologetically. "You were losing too much blood."

Benihko's hand closed around the stump and her brows knit. "Kabuto dissolved my arm somehow. He said it was a special anticoagulant – it kept me from sculpting anything. That's how he captured me." She grimaced at the memory. "Then he kept me captive. He wanted my jutsu … He's crazy."

"He's gone for now," said Shino. "But he's not dead, and we think he may be pursuing us. How do you feel – do you think you're strong enough to travel?"

Benihiko peered up into his hood. She shuddered a little. "I'm strong enough to fly," she said grimly, "if it will put more distance between me and that man." She curled her legs underneath her and held out her hand for help. Neji thought to take it and then checked himself; he was probably the last person in the world she wanted help from now. Lee pulled her up instead.

They set off, not at anything like top speed but still faster than they'd moved when Lee was carrying Benihiko. She seemed a little unbalanced; a few times she teetered on the tree branches as though she was about to lose her footing, and Neji got ready to catch her. It was never necessary, though, as each time she recovered her balance and pressed forward. He supposed it must be hard to adjust to the loss of a limb.

Presently he drew alongside her, traveling in silence a meter to her left. She ignored him.

"Benihiko," he said, wanting to get the worst of it over and leave her alone, "I should not have left you alone that day, regardless of my personal feelings. If I had followed orders and escorted you, you would not have been kidnapped and Master Yakuho would still be alive. I am … truly sorry." The words were difficult to speak; he rarely admitted he was wrong, preferring to make his feelings clear through actions instead. But he doubted he would see her again after they returned to the Leaf.

She looked sideways at him, and he was gratified to see that her eyes had regained their usual hardness. Until that moment he hadn't been sure she would really recover, but now he felt confident she would. Even if she hated him. "You have a high opinion of yourself," she said finally. "Kabuto is … a force. And his servants were also powerful. If you had been there, you would have been killed too. Like Master Yakuho." Her eyes narrowed when she mentioned her mentor.

He wasn't sure what to say to that. Her lack of rancor surprised him; she'd certainly _seemed_ angry earlier.

"What you should apologize for," she continued, "is what you said to me. It was ugly, and stupid."

"It was," he agreed readily. They leaped from one great oak to another, the sunlight dappling their faces. The other shinobi in their party kept their distance, perhaps sensing a private conversation in progress. "I spoke with Hinata-sama."

"Did you?"

"Yes. She told me you refused Lord Hyuuga."

Benihiko laughed, but it was a bitter and humorless sound. "Of course I refused him," she replied acidly. "He's old and obsessed with power. He looks at me and sees only my _kekkei genkai_. Like Kabuto. Like my mother. You should have known."

"I did. I just didn't quite believe it."

"Hmm." She was quiet a while. "If it's forgiveness you want, then take it. I don't blame you for Yakuho's death. I blame myself. When I got home that day, Master Yakuho was just barely alive. If I'd been fast enough, strong enough, I could have saved him. He was in too much pain to speak, but he looked at me, and I could tell he was begging for help." Her voice was gravel and sandpaper. "But once Kabuto robbed me of my _kekkei genkai_, I had nothing. I don't know any jutsu that doesn't use the blood-sculpting art, and I'm too weak to endure real pain. In the end, without my jutsu, I'm nothing."

She was confessing to him, as he had confessed to Hinata, out of self-loathing. "There's your art," he said eventually.

She laughed again, a horrible sound he wished she'd stop making. "My art … You want to know a secret? I cheated."

He blinked and glanced at her. She was serious. "I have no idea what you mean," he responded honestly.

"I'm nowhere near as talented as Master Yakuho was. Whenever I worked with clay, I dropped a small amount of my blood into the mix, and used that to manipulate the piece's shape. Working with just my hands, without _ninjutsu_, I would never have achieved the same results."

So. That explained how she was able to sculpt pieces thin enough to see through – they were artificially reinforced. "I don't know anything about art, but that doesn't sound like cheating to me. More like a different technique. The work is still yours."

"_No_," she insisted. "The work is my clan's, my _kekkei genkai_'s. Like I said, I'm nothing without it. I can't even protect an old man who was kind enough to take me in."

There was a fine line between guilt and self-pity. Impatiently he said, "And your decision to leave your clan, to side against them with the Leaf, to refuse Lord Hyuuga – how did those actions stem from your _kekkei genkai_?"

She was nonplussed. "What are you saying?" she asked irritably. "They had nothing to do with it – they were just choices I made."

"Exactly. They were _your_ choices, and they were unique. Apart from your _kekkei genkai_, _that's_ what you are." He paused to reconsider his next words, then decided to say them anyway: "And it's no cause for shame."

She gave no answer. She appeared to be thinking. Abruptly she stopped and dropped to the ground.

"What?" asked Neji, landing beside her. "Are you injured?" The others, Shino and Lee and Sakura, saw that they had stopped and doubled back to join them.

Benihiko looked at him carefully, her face inscrutable. "You have a point," she told him. "And now I'm making another choice. Sakura, I need your help."

"Of course," the medic replied. "Are you in pain? Are any of your injuries bleeding?"

"No, you've done an excellent job on me. I feel almost back to normal. Almost."

Neji saw where she was going. "You can't mean—"

"I'm not going back to Konoha like this," Benihiko said over him, her words directed at Sakura. "I refuse to be seen without my right arm."

Sakura's eyes widened. "I'm sorry about sealing it. I'll be happy to help you reopen the wound and make a new arm – _after_ we're back in the Leaf and in a proper hospital. You're still weak from what Kabuto did to you, low on blood and chakra. And I'm still spent from treating you."

"Then you won't help me?"

"No," said Sakura firmly, "not right now."

"Then you four go on without me. I'll take care of this myself, and catch up with you."

"Absolutely not," said Shino. "Kabuto may still be pursuing us."

She flinched at the name. "I know that, believe me. But this is not vanity. That arm meant something to me, and I won't let his actions deprive me of it. I will not return to Konoha in this condition." She stood defiantly, legs spread slightly apart, chin tilted upward.

Neji couldn't believe his words had somehow provoked this. "Benihiko, this makes no sense," he said coldly. "You'll get yourself killed, and then Master Yakuho's sacrifice will be for nothing."

She raised an eyebrow, radiating certainty. "I won't die. I know how to do this, because I've done it before. I have the benefit of experience; I'll lose less blood this time. I only wanted Sakura's help with the chakra control, because she's right that I'm still weak. But I'll risk it alone."

Lee had watched it all in puzzlement, his forehead wrinkled and his thick brows drawn together. "Forgive me for this, Benihiko-san," he said formally, "but, Shino-san, if she insists on this course of action, could we not take her by force?"

Shino shifted in place as he considered the question. "We could," he said at last, "but that hardly seems like the best way to preserve her health."

"Or yours," said Benihiko threateningly. "I won't give up without a fight."

It should have been ridiculous, a one-armed woman threatening a band of ninja, but Neji had too much experience with her jutsu not to take her seriously. They would win in the end, but it would be neither quick nor easy.

"I am unwilling to attack you," Shino told her. "You are an ally. But my orders do not permit me to leave you alone."

She shrugged. "Then stay here. I won't take long, though I can't promise to be quiet."

"I meant what I said," Sakura put in. "I don't have enough reserves left to help you with the chakra control. This is a terrible idea." She seemed incensed that someone would endanger all her hard work.

"Terrible or not, I mean to do it," said Benihiko. She looked directly at Neji, a challenge in her eyes. "I've made my decision."

He looked back at her, seeing her determination. In the end, as he'd told her, that was her defining quality. "How would it be," he said quietly, "if I assisted her with the chakra control, Sakura? Then you could preserve your chakra to deal with any medical emergencies that arise. I am not as adept as you, but I am a _jounin_ and my _juuken_ does require a certain finesse. I believe I can do it."

Sakura was staring at him as if she'd never seen him before, and Lee's mouth was hanging open. Shino, of course, looked pretty much the same as always. "You can't be _for_ this crazy plan!" the medic protested.

He shrugged. "Of course not. It's insane. But she's made her choice and I don't think she'll change her mind. That being the case, it's best if we do this in the safest and most efficient way possible, with someone helping her out. Otherwise she might go too far and injure herself." Benihiko was giving him a small smile, her eyes glittering in the sunlight filtering down through the trees.

"You have a point," Shino conceded. "You are really determined to do this, Benihiko?"

"Yes."

The hooded _chuunin_ sighed and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. "Then make it quick," he ordered. "Sakura, make sure she doesn't die."

"Shino, you _can't_ be serious!" Sakura wore an expression befitting the only person to remain sane while everyone else went mad. That might well have been her perception of the current situation.

"You heard me," said Shino, turning his back and striding off into the underbrush. "Lee and I will keep watch. Hurry up."

Lee closed his mouth and, with a last disbelieving look at Neji, set off with Shino. Sakura turned to Neji and Benihiko. "You're an idiot," she told the other woman flatly, "but I won't let you die. Sit down."

Benihiko obeyed, and Sakura crouched down on her right side and rolled up her sleeve, exposing the stump. "And it was healing so nicely," the medic sighed. "You know, Benihiko, I don't really have anything sharp enough to cut through this in one blow, and I don't want to risk giving you powerful painkillers right now. Those would cloud your mind, and you're going to need to concentrate."

"Agreed," replied Benihiko. "I did it without painkillers before, but I understand now that my _kekkei_ _genkai_ was easing the pain the whole time. This will be nothing compared to what I felt in that laboratory. And as for the blade, anything longer than a _kunai_ will do; my jutsu can make it as sharp as I like."

Sakura nodded, then reached behind her and drew the long dull knife she wore in a sheath across her lower back. "Like this?"

"That's perfect," said Benihiko, reaching out to accept it. "I'll sculpt a layer of purple over it, but it would help if you or Neji would make the actual cut – you'd have a better angle."

Sakura nodded curtly. "I'll do that, then," she said. "Neji-san will be occupied." Her eyes flicked over to him. "Come here," she directed, "and kneel down behind her." He did so, Sakura positioning him about a half-meter behind Benihiko. "Now place your hand – whichever one you're better at controlling chakra from –on her back." He laid his right hand flat between her shoulder blades. "When I make the cut, Neji-san, I want you to begin directing chakra into her body. You'll know how to do it so that it doesn't injure her. Concentrate the chakra on the right side of her body, and don't add too much; most of what she's using should still come from her. She'll use her jutsu to shape the chakra and blood, and you're going to support those efforts. If something goes wrong, or if I tell you to halt, stop what you're doing immediately and remove your hand from her back. Is that all clear?"

"Very," he said, impressed by her attention to detail. She was against this, but she still intended to see it done right.

"Fine," said Sakura. "Everyone's ready then. Benihiko, prepare the blade."

Benihko nodded once, then gripped the blunt knife in her left hand and drew it once across her rib cage, leaving a shallow cut. "Blood of my mothers," said Benihiko, "be my sword!"

Neji was prepared for the flash of light this time, and looked away briefly as it came. When he looked back Sakura had the knife, now with a glowing violet blade, held high in the air above Benihiko's head. She brought it whistling down through the air with great force, striking the stump a couple of centimeters above its end. The blade, sharper now than mere steel, passed cleanly through, making a straight even cut.

It all happened very fast, and Benihiko let out a strangled scream as the knife passed through her upper arm. Looked via his Byakugan through the back of her head, Neji saw that she was biting her bottom lip hard enough to send blood trickling down her chin.

That was his cue, and he commenced transmitting chakra through her back and into the right side of her body. He watched her chakra network, which in her case was the same as her circulatory system, carefully, and saw blood and chakra pouring out of the wound. But then Benihiko lifted her left hand and made some odd one-handed hand signs, and murmured some words he didn't quite catch. The jutsu started, and suddenly the hemorrhaging stopped and the blood seemed to freeze and morph in midair, turning back on itself, returning to its source.

Neji could feel the young woman trembling violently. He kept sending chakra into her system, molding it to reinforce the finger-like structures she was now struggling to form. It was working; the amorphous red mass extending down from her shoulder was beginning to look like something, like an arm.

For a while longer they kept it up, shaping and refining. He watched his chakra and hers flowing together, and saw at last what he should have seen earlier, what Lord Hyuuga already knew: it was a harmonious match. Like two links in a chain, like an artist's two hands, forming a new destiny from the old.


End file.
